Another download issue.

[dinkypumpkin]

On 07/10/2014 19:04, Vangelis forthnet wrote:
> Yes, the player gets the vPID by fetching this json file:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/[pid]/playlist.json

I've been observing this as well.  These have been rolling in with 
changes in the flash player and episode pages.  I noticed some radio 
programmes that were still using the XML playlists on Monday have now 
switched to the JSON playlists. This appears to be the new way of things.

We need to wait a week or so to see what is really happening with the 
XML playlists.  If next week we find that XML playlists contain 
"noItems" for programmes that are more than 7 days old yet were first 
broadcast after the 28-day switchover, that will indicate a systemic 
problem rather than isolated cases of broken XML playlists.

The few examples reported to date were all broadcast in the same 3-day 
period (25/09-27/09).  That could be coincidence, or it could just be a 
few bits of bad metadata caused by some temporary problem at the BBC. 
The first report was for an episode of Rip-Off Britain.  Episodes from 
25/09 and earlier have broken XML playlists, but episodes from 28/09 are 
OK.  OTOH, earlier episodes of Click are OK, and all previous episodes 
of Doctor Who - including 27/09 - are OK.  No real rhyme or reason there.

There are a few other issues to fix as well.  For example, the new 
episode page structure breaks downloading with iPlayer Radio URLs. 
Anything that relies on screen scraping is inherently fragile, so no 
surprise there.

> What my aging mind proposes is that (for an interim crude fix) a new
> "vpid" option be created, its value would be the string one finds
> manually via, e.g., the "page source" method you kindly revealed; this
> option would work alongside the standard "pid "one and the script would
> be instructed to look for the manually fed value in cases where the
> standard method of using the (now "legacy") "playlist URL" returns
> either of these:
>
> <noItems reason="preAvailability"/>
> <noItems reason="postAvailability"/>
> <noItems reason="noMedia"/>
>
> If no "vpid" value, then it would proceed to display the standard error
> message:
> WARNING: No programmes are available for this pid with version(s): default'

I think this can be done automatically without the need for a new option 
simply by trying the JSON playlist if the XML playlist returns "noItems".

> To communicate to the average Joe/Jill that a new "patched" version of
> GiP has been created is another difficult task - many are oblivious to
> the existence of this list and/or SP's support forum...

I'd planned to release a new version this month, so if I make the above 
fixes, they will be included.  The timing of all this is unfortunate - 
the new release was nearly ready.