Hi guys,
We've been working on some changes for version 2 of the XML guide, and thought we'd run them by you to see if you had any comments or suggestions. Here are the changes we've made so far:
- All dates and times are now in UTC.
- Removed the "broadcast-type" entity that contained flags such as BW, WS, HD, R, and CC. Now using fields defined in the original XMLTV spec. for these items (actually the XMLTV spec didn't include a field for HD, so we created a new "quality" entity, but the others were there, just kind of oddly-named):
<video>
<colour>yes</colour>
<aspect>16:9</aspect>
<quality>HDTV</quality>
</video>
<previously-shown/>
<subtitles type="teletext"/>
- Added a new "ice-xml-version" entity, which shows the version of the XML format we're using. It's set to 2.0 for this new version of xmlguide.
- Version 2 uses a new DTD, which you can view here:
http://server.icetv.info/webguide/webguide2.dtd
- Added the current date and time to the "date" element of the "tv" entity at the top, to show when the data was created. The format is "YYYYMMDDhhmmss" and it's in UTC. For example:
<tv date="20050208040012" source-info-url="
http://www.zaptv.info" source-info-name="ZapTV" generator-info-name="ZapTV" generator-info-url="
http://www.zaptv.info">
- Added the ability to specify a "last modified time" in the URL. If included, only program records modified after the specified time and date are sent. The usual format is "&mod_time=YYYYMMDDhhmmss", expressed as UTC. This value can be copied from the "date" element of the "tv" entity, which shows the time and date the XML data was created. By sending this value back in a new request as the last modified time, the output can be limited to only those records modified since the last request. This includes any new programs added since the previous request, as well as programs that were sent before, but have since changed.
Comments welcome.
When it's ready for beta testing (soon), we'll post a msg to the Announcements forum.
Thanks,
Russell