BBC Collections

[Vangelis forthnet]

 On Mon Oct 9 08:21:19 BST 2017, Mike Casswell wrote:

> at BBC Collections locations such as
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p056n6px
>
> This method has worked in the past for apparently similar collections -
> but note the use of 'group' in the url
> which I do not recall from previous examples.

 Hi Mike... I don't think "group PIDs" were ever
supported in GiP, only "brand" and "series" ones...
so it might have been a brand/series page that has
worked for you in the past...
 Since we can't test things now :-( , it's mostly my
word against your memory, hahah...; but I found a Forum
entry from March 2015 that supports my claim:

https://squarepenguin.co.uk/forums/thread-377-post-2112.html#pid2112

>> You can't download from the PID for a group, like the one you posted.

 On Mon Oct 9 11:54:56 BST 2017, Alan Milewczyk wrote:

> there was a change a while back that made this method obsolete
> (you'd have to go through the release notes of previous versions
> to determine when the change took place)

 That change was the removal of the various XML feeds
by the beeb at the end of April (2017). GiP 3.00 was the
first version that tried to alleviate it as much as possible
https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/wiki/release300#1-restored-functionality-broken-by-the-bbc
but do note the following limitation:
https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/wiki/release300#recursive-downloads

> Using the individual PIDs is the only way AFAIK

 Currently yes; but I'm sure there's a number of
dextrous list members who could conjure up a
(simple?) script that would parse (web scrape)
"group" pages to harvest the individual PIDs;
just examining page source of
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p056n6px
I'm seeing href="*" URIs with "#group=p056n6px"
appended to them... That's the ones containing the PIDs.

 Wouldn't hurt to request such a feature in
the Forum, either (but, TBH, very unlikely to be
even considered by the dev...; will also be,
like all web scraping, very fragile, even to the
slightest beeb change...).

Best regards all,
Vangelis.