[mythtv-users] Optional subscription to thetvdb? (was Important: Changes to Metadata lookup in March 2021)

[David Hampton]

On Mon, 2021-03-01 at 19:07 +0000, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 8:06 AM Ian Evans <dheianevans at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Just curious though if there's any consideration of allowing Mythtv
> > users to use the paid API in the future, much in the way that we
> > can use Schedules Direct or EIT.
> 
> As I recall, the existing code uses an API
> key that I think was created (at TheTVDB)
> for MythTV and is hardcoded in the
> existing script.
> 
> So, if someone was so motivated, it
> should be possible to utilize a subscriber
> specific login (either using the brute force
> approach of replacing the key with your
> own in the appropriate file(s)), or ideally
> adding in some code to optionally check
> for and use the appropriate authentication
> from a file in CONFDIR (just like certain
> other api keys/tokens are looked for there).
> 
> If this is an itch someone wishes to scratch
> they would hopefully contribute back to
> the project after they completed it.  I have
> not looked at the code myself for eons,
> but suspect this would be easy enough to
> be tagged with a "good first issue" for a
> new contributor (of course, I admit that
> sometimes what seems like it would be
> easy turns into a quagmire due to other
> issues).

Looking at the API, it appears to require both a MythTV project
specific key and a user's PIN to login. It appears that there will be
some validation by TheTVDB before a project specific key will be
issued. I'll update when I know a more.

David