[mythtv-users] Schedules Direct JSON service changes 2022-05-20

[Tom Dexter]

On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 12:00 PM Gary Buhrmaster
<gary.buhrmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 10:36 AM Paul Harrison <mythtv at mythqml.net> wrote:
>
> > A slightly unexpected consequence of the switch over is one of the two XMLTV grabbers for SD has been broken. The  tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite is OK but tv_grab_zz_sdjson has a bug. I understand there is a fix being worked on but it could be a while before it makes it into the packaged versions that most distros use. It may be a simple matter of having to apply a temporary patch or change by hand a perl file to get it to work? I'm sure the helpful users on this list will come up with a workaround so whatch this space:)
>
> The (obvious) trivial fix to deal with an initially
> observed issue (not following redirects) with
> the zz_sdjson grabber was submitted as a PR,
> but there have been other issues identified
> (various uninitialized variables messages,
> program guide data not being in the correct
> timeframe) strongly suggests that there are
> other code issues in that grabber (a couple
> of developers reported that their apps failed
> with the new endpoint, and then identified
> that their code was not API compliant, and
> had just gotten "lucky" previously).  At
> this point, other than the required (but not
> sufficient) PR for redirects, no one TTBOMK
> has explicitly stepped up to report they are
> looking at the zz_sdjson grabber for API
> compliance, but since the service is now
> offline, it would be hard to test if they were.

When they talk about being "API compliant" are they referring to being
compliant specifically with Schedules Direct's API documentation? It's
pretty odd that the zz_sdjson would have worked before and then broken
so badly for some users...though I suppose the new service could be
doing things that are in fact compliant that the zz_sdjson grabber
doesn't handle properly.

Personally I have no idea what to do at this point. I'm not even going
to apply the patch for now because I don't want to totally scramble
the schedule I have. It sounds like switching to the sqlite grabber
may be the way to go, but when I revisited that on the MythTV XMLTV
wiki I remembered why I didn't go with that in the first place. It
seems like a total nightmare to set up.

Tom