How to find a particular episode

[Colin Law]

On 4 March 2012 02:50, Andy Bircumshaw <andy at networkned.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 3 March 2012, at 14:52, Colin Law wrote:
>>> …
>>>
>>> I have to question whether you're really asking the right question here. Why are you trying to do this programatically? Are you sure you wouldn't be better off using --pvr mode? (for example).
>>
>> In fact to say I want to do it programatically is a bit of an
>> exaggeration.  I don't need the power of PVR mode, I just  wanted to
>> download a particular episode overnight via a cron job as I have a
>> download limit during the day but unlimited overnight.  Initially I
>> did it using the id number shown in the search but after it downloaded
>> the wrong program I realised that the number for a particular program
>> is not fixed.
>
>
> You can also use, then, `get_iplayer --pid b01czdrg`
>
> However, this *is* exactly what --pvr is for - when you add a programme using `get_iplayer --pvr-queue 1234` then get_iplayer will look up the PID and store that as the download criteria. It doesn't matter if the index number changes, as it invariably will, because the PID is eternal.

OK, I did not realise that --pvr-queue would do that.  Presumably
there is a very small chance that the number will change between doing
the search and issuing the pvr queue command, but probably vanishingly
small.  Or is it clever enough to get the pid from the previous search
rather than querying again?

> Setting up a daily cronjob for off-peak hours, with only `get_iplayer --pvr` seems easier to me than setting ad-hoc cronjobs for `get_iplayer "some complex search"` and then having to remember to delete each one the next day.

Yes, I think I am convinced, I thought the pvr stuff was more complex
in basic operation, but I see it can be used to do exactly what I
want.  Actually I think it does not matter if one forgets to remove
the cron job as it will not fetch the file again, if I read the docs
correctly (provided it is still there of course).  Not that I would
ever to forget to remove the job anyway... ah, crontab -e isn't it?

Thanks once again for all the help, and thanks to the developers for
some great s/w.

Colin L