why no sports score app?

BlackBetty · 04-10-2007, 05:06 PM

I want to be able to fire up this app on my TiVo and see all the current sport scores.

apps-tv · 04-10-2007, 07:05 PM

If you can point to a clean, legal feed for that data I'd be happy to write one. Last time I looked into it there were no feeds providing the scores. You'd end up having to scrape it from some website. Just an rss feed with the scores would be enough.

I think the data is pretty tightly controlled (at it least it was a decade ago when I worked for espn.com).

I'd love to be proven wrong about that, I was wishing I had that app a few days ago while waiting to see if the avalanche would eek into the playoffs.

ashu · 04-10-2007, 10:05 PM

Maybe the html or js source resulting from the calls a sports ticker somewhere provides would suffice? but it wouldn't be general at all, and would need to be hand-endtered, or written into a Galleon or PC-based "drag-drop ticker URL here" kind of app!

Oh, and it's eke, although if you're talking about the Avs, perhaps eek IS more appropriate

BlackBetty · 04-11-2007, 09:53 AM

I wish yahoo would create one. They gave us weather and traffic. It would be killer if they gave us a sports score app. They obviously already have access to all that info.

Now that is something I would brag and show off to friends when they came over.

Dan203 · 04-11-2007, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apps-tv

If you can point to a clean, legal feed for that data I'd be happy to write one. Last time I looked into it there were no feeds providing the scores. You'd end up having to scrape it from some website. Just an rss feed with the scores would be enough.

I don't know how reliable it is, but here is a site which offers current sports scores via RSS...

http://www.totallyscored.com

Dan

apps-tv · 04-11-2007, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan203

I don't know how reliable it is, but here is a site which offers current sports scores via RSS...

http://www.totallyscored.com

Dan

Yeah, I had looked at them, but I believe they only post scores of completed games. I'll double check. That may be enough to have at least something though. Right now, they seem to be down for me.

Dan203 · 04-11-2007, 01:17 PM

I was just looking around and I discovered that the NBA actually offers an official RSS feed for scores. Unfortunately none of the other major sports do the same.

http://www.nba.com/scores/rss.xml

Dan

apps-tv · 04-11-2007, 01:26 PM

Thanks, I hadn't seen that. I'll see what I can do with it.

Dan203 · 04-11-2007, 08:11 PM

Check it out I found a site that has an RSS feed for the scores in all the major sports...

http://www.sportsnetwork.com/default...e=news/rss.htm

Dan

BlackBetty · 04-11-2007, 09:39 PM

do you smell that? .....Its the smell of progress

rdrrepair · 04-11-2007, 11:52 PM

Wow, looks like we are going to get a sports ticker! Yes, can't wait! Great find Dan!

Can any RSS feed be made to work on TiVo? What about the RSS feed from this site?

apps-tv · 04-12-2007, 01:23 AM

Sweet! I'll see what I can do in the next couple days.

And yes, this can fit into any hme rss reader, galleon has one and I think there's one that comes with the hme sdk.

rdrrepair · 04-12-2007, 08:00 AM

Will you be making one with the option to check off the feed(s) you wish to subscribe to, or several different versions?

apps-tv · 04-12-2007, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rdrrepair

Will you be making one with the option to check off the feed(s) you wish to subscribe to, or several different versions?

My guess is that the first pass will be dead simple, a list of sports linking to a screen with all the scores for that day (and probably yesterday).

csell · 04-16-2007, 04:30 PM

I actually wrote one a long time ago and still use it. I've recently been working on having it display box scores and such, but thats still a work in progress. I've attached some screenshots to show what the app does. Nothing spectacular, but gets the job done...

My problem is I do not know how to distribute or make an install for it. I'm a vc++ programmer and just learned java so I could write the application. If someone wants to teach me or guide me on how to make it distributable, that would be great. But I'm not giving away the source code, especially right now since I'm in the middle of doing more work on it (the box scores).

apps-tv · 04-16-2007, 07:01 PM

Nice, to distribute it, you should just make a jar with all the necessary files including the files from the hme.jar, hme-host-sample.jar and bananas.jar

with all those in there the user can start it from the commandline

BlackBetty · 04-16-2007, 10:43 PM

cool. Looks like a great start! I see a sports HME app being a killer app for the TiVo. A hell of a lot better than the current yahoo and game stuff we have.

csell · 04-17-2007, 09:46 AM

If I supply the jar files, can someone make an installer program. I know you can do it from the command line, but I've been wanting to give this to a few people recently, but they aren't really computer people and wouldn't understand how to do that. I'm hoping for an install application that will run the program on startup. I'd like to also use the install program to learn how to do it as I have a few other ideas for apps in the future...

I do need a few days before i can get you all those jar files. As I mentioned in the initial posting I'm in the process of adding box score features (for baseball) and it still has a lot of work to be done on that (finding time for that is a challenge!). So I'll want to take those out and just distribute the original program which gives you scores of all games of all sports (in progress and completed games).

One final thing about an installer. Is it possible to get it to work with Galleon?

csell · 04-17-2007, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apps-tv

Nice, to distribute it, you should just make a jar with all the necessary files including the files from the hme.jar, hme-host-sample.jar and bananas.jar

with all those in there the user can start it from the commandline

apps-tv,

you mentioned you can run it from the command line. can you explain how to do that. I would like to test it on one of my other computers. like i said earlier, i'm a c++ programmer and am completely new to java, so excuse me for my lack of knowledge! Right now I have the three jar files (hme.jar, hme-host-sample.jar, and SportScores.jar)...

Thanks

F8ster · 04-17-2007, 02:07 PM

It'll be something like this:

Code:

java -cp hme.jar;hme-host-sample.jar;SportScores.jar com.tivo.hme.host.sample.Main my.package.name.SportScores

This is a Windows example, and you'll have to replace the stuff in red with the package name and Application class for your app, but this should get you started.

Depending on what my time looks like, I can write you a quickie installer, at least for Windows boxes. It's also fairly easy to wrap this as a Windows service using exe4j or javaservice. See my developer how-tos here:

http://bitrazor.com/content/tivo/hme/howtos/index.php

I also highly recommend the excellent Beginning TiVo Programming book, which covers a lot of this stuff, and it's not just because I was one of the editors.

-- Dave

apps-tv · 04-17-2007, 08:28 PM

I should also mention that if you run it on a publicly accessable server and register it at www.apps.tv, anybody with a tivo can use it and you don't have to worry about packaging it up!

BlackBetty · 04-18-2007, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apps-tv

I should also mention that if you run it on a publicly accessable server and register it at www.apps.tv, anybody with a tivo can use it and you don't have to worry about packaging it up!

Even better!!!

csell · 04-19-2007, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by F8ster

It'll be something like this:

Code:

java -cp hme.jar;hme-host-sample.jar;SportScores.jar com.tivo.hme.host.sample.Main my.package.name.SportScores

This is a Windows example, and you'll have to replace the stuff in red with the package name and Application class for your app, but this should get you started.

Depending on what my time looks like, I can write you a quickie installer, at least for Windows boxes. It's also fairly easy to wrap this as a Windows service using exe4j or javaservice. See my developer how-tos here:

I also highly recommend the excellent Beginning TiVo Programming book, which covers a lot of this stuff, and it's not just because I was one of the editors.

-- Dave

Thanks Dave. And by the way, I just asked my wife to buy me your Beginning Tivo Programming book for an Anniversary gift - quite the romantic I am

csell · 04-19-2007, 11:44 PM

Ok, here is the Sport Scores application that I have been talking about. But first a few things :

I originally made this for myself and never really intended on distributing it. I did it because it was an enjoyable way to learn Java plus it was an app that I wanted for my tivo. As a result, it is not perfect and I'm sure everyone could list tons of things wrong or a huge list of desired features. One example, there is no refresh. Once you start the app, the scores will remain the same. So if you are on it for a while and want to refresh it, basically you need to exit it and start over. It would be a simple feature to add, but I never saw a need for it since I don't just sit there with the app always running, I just run it when I want to check a few scores and then I close it. But maybe I'll add it later.

As far as other features in the future, I am currently working on box scores. So you can not only see the score of a game, but you would be able to go into that game and see its live box score. I'm actually close on this, its just a matter of finding the time to finish it. But I will and I'll update it when I get that going.

If anyone wants to suggest other features, feel free to. I just can't guarantee when I can get to implementing it.

Finally, the attachment is just a bat file and the main jar file. Add the bananas.jar (1.3), hme.jar (1.4), and hme-host-sample.jar to the 'dist' directory. I'd much rather have an installer for it so it can run as a windows service. But I have yet to figure that out and don't see myself doing that anytime soon. But I would love it if someone else can do that using the jar files I provided. If they do, it would be appreciated if not only they can post it but also explain what they did so I don't have to rely on them in the future.

Hope you enjoy and more importantly, I hope this works on other systems as its only been tested on my two computers! Please let me know if it works...

Chris

csell · 04-20-2007, 10:28 AM

Just a quick fix/update to the app. I hadn't really tested it too much, but did this morning and realized that when you are on the main screen, hitting the left button does not exit the app like it should. So I quickly fixed that...

Chris

BlackBetty · 04-20-2007, 01:10 PM

csell can you provide some instructions for us idiots on how to install this app.

csell · 04-20-2007, 03:00 PM

Blackbetty,

Hopefully all you need to do is unzip that zip file. And then add the other jar files (bananas.jar (1.3), hme.jar (1.4), and hme-host-sample.jar) to the 'dist' directory. And then just run the sportScores.bat file. This is not the ideal way of doing it. It really needs to run as a windows service, which can be done if someone sets up an install program for it, which shouldn't be too difficult, but unfortunately I'm new to Java and really don't know how to do that. I hope someone on here can write a quick install or come up with a quick solution and also briefly explain to me how I can do it in the future if I want to release updates. I'm planning on buying the Beginning Tivo Programming book which will help, but I'm not sure when that will be...

Chris

BlackBetty · 04-20-2007, 05:59 PM

great! I'll wait for someone to provide the install.

csell · 04-20-2007, 11:30 PM

Alright, here's yet another update. Sorry about this, but as I said I did minimal debugging cause this was just something I wrote for myself. But I am going through it and trying to improve it. The previous version had a bug where the scores of games currently being played were not being displayed, just completed games. This has been fixed with this version...

Has anyone tried this yet. I'm curious to see if it actually works on someone else's system!

F8ster · 04-21-2007, 12:09 AM

OK, here it is. For Windows users, it installs itself as a service. I've also included a shell script for Mac or UNIX users. No warranty expressed or implied, use at your own risk and all that. Should be pretty solid, though; I leveraged a lot of stuff from previous apps that have been working for years.

Windows users:
http://bitrazor.com/sportscores/spor...00-install.exe

Simply run the installer. An uninstaller is also included.

Mac/UNIX users:
http://bitrazor.com/sportscores/sportscores-1.00.zip

Unzip to a directory of your choosing, then run it via:
bash ./sportscores.sh

For the developmentally curious:
Here's the ant script I use to create the service and installer: build.xml
Here's the NSIS install script that creates the installer: SportScores.nsi
Here's the whole shootin' match as an Eclipse project folder: SportScores-Eclipse-Project.zip

You'll need EXE4J to actually create the service executable. It's not free, but it's a really good app and worth the money if you're going to do this with any regularity. JavaService is a free alternative.