Refactoring iplayer-dl
I’ve done a bit of work on refactoring iplayer-dl, with two aims in mind:
- Improving the JavaScript parsing that determines available versions
- Making the code easier to repurpose and integrate into GUIs etc.
The most important result of this work is that it’s no longer a standalone script. This shouldn’t necessarily make it harder to use, though. Once you’ve unpacked the code, you’ll need to run the following commands in the iplayer-dl directory to install the libraries and command-line tool:
ruby setup.rb config sudo ruby setup.rb install
You can omit sudo on Windows, I think; some Linuxes might require you to use su instead.
The iplayer-dl command should be installed somewhere in your path, and you’ll be able to use it from anywhere just by typing its name.
The tarball conforms to the Debian packaging guidelines for Ruby applications, incidentally, so it should be straightforward to make a .deb for Ubuntu/Debian, or even a port for MacPorts.
You can download a snapshot, or check out the latest version:
svn co http://paulbattley.googlecode.com/svn/iplayer-dl
If you’re reporting a bug, please also write the URL or PID of the programme you were trying to download.
2008-04-27 18:59 UTC. Comments: 57.
Keeping up with iplayer-dl
I’ve had a productive evening hacking iplayer-dl. Here’s a short list of improvements: More…
2008-04-17 01:19 UTC.
iPlayer cat and mouse
My iPlayer download script had been failing on a number of programmes recently, and I’d assumed that they were just not encoded as MPEG 4 files. Having seen them work on a real iPhone, though, I now know that it’s not the case. More…
2008-04-10 13:41 UTC. Comments: 5.
Selenium, Firefox 3, and Mac OS X
The latest Firefox 3 betas are really good, and a big improvement over Firefox 2. The improvement in performance on my Eee PC is enormous, but even on the quad-core Xeon I’ve got at work, the increased snappiness is welcome. There are some good interface tweaks as well; after learning to work with the ‘Awesome Bar’ rather than against it, I’ve come to like it. Unfortunately, there’s a downside: Selenium, which we use for acceptance testing at Reevoo, doesn’t work with Firefox 3. More…
2008-04-09 14:56 UTC. Comments: 1.
Princess Diana is still dead
This might not make a lot of sense unless you’re very familiar with the British press, but the Daily Express managed to achieve the perfect front page today: More…
2008-04-08 21:21 UTC. Comments: 1.
Older entries can be found in the diary section.
