[flatten] Automatically Removing Programmes from Series Folders

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Brian

Brian

Administrator
Staff member
I'll be able to find time to watch some more programmes now.:D

So I'll now have the choice to put things in folders if I want to, and the rest of the time leave them in one long list just as I like.:)

Thanks again for your efforts, you have now sorted out for me what must have been the worst feature of the HDR-FOX T2.:D
 
af123

af123

Administrator
Staff member
No problem - give it a week to make sure it's stable, I might even consider using something similar on mine. I often find myself watching something then having to delete the folder just to clean up the main list.
 
S

Sam Widges

Active Member
I saw this last night (I was away and had limited access) and I was going to suggest modifying seriesfiler as all the key features are already in there. But now I get back and I find that af123 has beaten me to it!
 
af123

af123

Administrator
Staff member
It could be done just as easily in shell as jim, but I do so much sh and ksh at work it's refreshing to work in something else, and jim is so much nicer for dealing with files in general and particularly those with spaces in their name, plus the framework for looking at the hmt info is already established as a jim class.
 
af123

af123

Administrator
Staff member
Black Hole said:
(On the subject of WebIF, why can't we delete folders? And how about being able to move recordings?)
Click to expand...

Only because it was never high enough on my todo list. I'm looking at it for the next release though since it fits with other stuff I'm adding.
 
oijonesey

oijonesey

Hummy.tv SEO Guru
Astounding - the original request was made on Saturday at 10:50pm. First seen by af123 at about 7pm Sunday night, and just 40 minutes later a solution was up and available, and by midnight tried and tested. Wallop - there you go job done! Truly impressive stuff by anyones standards.

I'd love to know how many of Humax's own software team are running the Custom Firmware on their own boxes!!
 
Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
This is not meant to criticise, of course not, but with my middle-management hat on...

This solution is more constrictive than it needs to be. It's okay making it a condition that user-created folders are enclosed in [] as long as the user wants to flatten everything else. It does not leave an opening for some series recordings to be filed away automatically if the user wants (unless auto-filer plugs the gap?).

If you used a flag file instead of a specially-constructed folder name, it would then be possible to allow some series folders to be retained and others flattened. I'm not sure how to initialise that - one might have to turn off flatten while the series recording establishes and then set the flag before enabling flatten, but hey - I'm middle management, not the guy with all the solutions!
 
af123

af123

Administrator
Staff member
A flag would be easy to implement, but creating the flag would have to be done over telnet or via FTP, unless the option was somehow added to webif dynamically by the package (and I don't have time to do that now).

I think that for this very specific requirement, a specific solution suffices. I don't imagine that a lot of users will want to do this and if that turns out to be wrong then it can be extended in the future.
 
Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
af123 said:
A flag would be easy to implement, but creating the flag would have to be done over telnet or via FTP, unless the option was somehow added to webif dynamically by the package (and I don't have time to do that now).

I think that for this very specific requirement, a specific solution suffices. I don't imagine that a lot of users will want to do this and if that turns out to be wrong then it can be extended in the future.
Click to expand...
I've been thinking about it, and I think this is definitely something I would like to do and I suspect many people would find useful. I'm not familiar with auto-filer so perhaps somebody could comment where its abilities may overlap.

Scenario: I have a few subjects of special interest I like to gather up for future delectation and probably archive, and a general schedule which need watching at the same rate as they come in (or deleted if they exceesd the time available). The latter are best kept in the top folder to view in date order, the former stored in their relevant series-link folders.

The present situation is that I have to trawl through the series folders to find the next recording to watch, and then trawl through them again to find recordings to delete having watched (and as I mostly do this streamed, they are not even marked as having been watched and I have to remember whether I've watched it or not). If I used flatten the situation would be improved, but then I would have to file away special-interest recordings myself (or perhaps auto-filer could help).

Some sort of mixed-mode semi-flatten would definitely be useful, but I will have to think of a way it could be done. Maybe I'll even have a look at the script myself (my situation is changing). Anybody with a steer on auto-filer please comment.
 
S

Sam Widges

Active Member
The auto-filer logic is very simple - if a folder name exists at the top level and at a lower level, the contents of the top level folder are copied into the lower folder and the, now empty, top level folder is deleted.

There would be ways to tweak how auto-filer works - the simplest would be through a hidden file in the series directory (one beginning with a '.') such as '.ignore' which could tell auto-filer to not process the contents of a directory. I'm not sure why you'd want to do that though as you would then have multiple directories on your box for the same series, but it illustrates the point. It gets more complicated when you consider deleting the series directory with something like flatten in which case you would need to find somewhere else to keep the hidden files and a logic for the way that they are named or constructed.
 
af123

af123

Administrator
Staff member
The version of flatten I've just uploaded will also skip any directory which contains a file called .noflatten (note the leading dot)- there is no mechanism for creating this file through the webif though, FTP works fine.
 
Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
That's great, thanks. Now I need to work out how to cope with creating a new series recording not to be flattened (have to remember to turn flatten off).
 
Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
Sam Widges said:
The auto-filer logic is very simple - if a folder name exists at the top level and at a lower level, the contents of the top level folder are copied into the lower folder and the, now empty, top level folder is deleted.

There would be ways to tweak how auto-filer works - the simplest would be through a hidden file in the series directory (one beginning with a '.') such as '.ignore' which could tell auto-filer to not process the contents of a directory. I'm not sure why you'd want to do that though as you would then have multiple directories on your box for the same series, but it illustrates the point. It gets more complicated when you consider deleting the series directory with something like flatten in which case you would need to find somewhere else to keep the hidden files and a logic for the way that they are named or constructed.
Click to expand...
I think there's going to be some kind of conflict if somebody has both flatten and auto-filer running, unless they've been designed to run one before the other so the result is predictable. It seems to me there is a usefulness to running both, which would obviate the .noflatten flag:

Suppose we are recording Series A, Series B, and Series C. We wish to archive A and B, and flatten C. We predefine folders "/[KEEP]/Series A" and "/[KIDS]/Series B", then we have auto-filer run first and flatten run second.

It's all getting a bit complicated. I think (on the back burner) we need a utility which replaces auto-filer and flatten with a universal folder tidy-up. One thing which bothers me is I can't always predict what a created series folder name will be, because of errors in the EPG data. For example, during Autumnwatch Live and Autumnwatch Unsprung, some episodes of Unsprung turned up in the Live folder! Similar things happen with Strictly and Strictly Results.

I shall make this something to think about.
 
Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
Right, I've set up some [*] folders, and .noflattened others, and installed flatten (and given it a reboot and time) and I'm pleased to say it has done exactly what it was expected to do. The contents of any folder not marked as above has been moved to the top level, and all folders not marked have been deleted.

One curio: in the WebIF media browser, I can see [] folders and open them, but the content (although the total file sizes register) is not listed. I'm going to raise this in the WebIF topic (click).
 
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