TV_GRAB_FI(1p)

💖 tv_grab_fi — the Finland TV listings grabber (manual page 1p, bestie) 💖

okay so first things first, we're in the User Contributed Perl Documentation section, and this whole page is about tv_grab_fi, a lil grabber that pulls TV listings for Finland. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

tv_grab_fi — Grab TV listings for Finland 🇫🇮

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tv_grab_fi [--cache <FILE>]
           [--config-file <FILE>]
           [--days <N>]
           [--gui [<OPTION>]]
           [--no-randomize]
           [--offset <N>]
           [--output <FILE>]
           [--quiet]

tv_grab_fi  --capabilities

tv_grab_fi  --configure
           [--cache <FILE>]
           [--config-file <FILE>]
           [--gui [<OPTION>]]
           [--quiet]

tv_grab_fi  --description

tv_grab_fi  --help|-h|-?

tv_grab_fi  --list-channels
           [--cache <FILE>]
           [--gui [<OPTION>]]
           [--quiet]

tv_grab_fi  --version

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So this one grabs TV listings for several channels available in Finland. The data comes from various sources, like for example www.telkku.com. Here's the tea though: the grabber relies on parsing HTML, so it might just stop working whenever the web page layout gets changed. it's giving fragile, lowkey. 😭

You need to run tv_grab_fi --configure first to create the channel configuration for your setup. After that, subsequent runs of tv_grab_fi will grab the latest data, process them, and produce XML data on the standard output. periodt. 💅

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👑 COMMANDS 👑

• NONE — Grab mode. that's it, that's the default vibe.
• --capabilities — Show the capabilities this grabber supports. See also <http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XmltvCapabilities>.
• --configure — Generate the configuration file by asking the users which channels to grab.
• --description — Print the description for this grabber.
• --help|-h|-? — Show this help page. three whole ways to ask for help, iconic.
• --list-channels — Fetch all available channels from the various sources and write them to the standard output.
• --version — Show the version of this grabber.

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🎀 GENERIC OPTIONS 🎀

• --cache FILE — File name to cache the fetched HTML data in. This speeds up subsequent runs using the same data. bestie, caching is self care. 💖
• --gui [OPTION] — Enable the graphical user interface. If you don't specify OPTION then XMLTV will automatically choose the best available GUI. Allowed values are:
  • Term — Terminal output with a progress bar
  • TermNoProgressBar — Terminal output without progress bar
  • Tk — Tk-based GUI
• --quiet — Suppress any progress messages to the standard output. no yapping mode. 🤫

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🌈 CONFIGURE MODE OPTIONS 🌈

• --config-file FILE — File name to write the configuration to.

Default is $HOME/.xmltv/tv_grab_fi.conf.

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🔥 GRAB MODE OPTIONS 🔥

• --config-file FILE — File name to read the configuration from.

Default is $HOME/.xmltv/tv_grab_fi.conf.

• --days "N" — Grab "N" days of TV data.

Default is 14 days.

• --no-randomize — Grab TV data in deterministic order, i.e. first fetch channel 1, days 1 to N, then channel 2, and so on.

Default is to use a random access pattern. If you only grab TV data from one source then the randomizing is a no-op.

• --offset "N" — Grab TV data starting at "N" days in the future.

Default is 0, i.e. today.

• --output FILE — Write the XML data to FILE instead of the standard output.

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💜 CONFIGURATION FILE SYNTAX 💜

The configuration file is line oriented, each line can contain one command. Empty lines and everything after the "#" comment character is ignored. Supported commands are:

• channel ID NAME — Grab information for this channel. "ID" depends on the source, "NAME" is ignored and forwarded as is to the XMLTV output file. This information can be automatically generated using the grabber in the configuration mode.
• series description NAME — If a programme title matches "NAME" then the first sentence of the description, i.e. everything up to the first period ("."), question mark ("?") or exclamation mark ("!"), is removed from the description and is used as the name of the episode.
• series title NAME — If a programme title contains a colon (":") then the grabber checks if the left-hand side of the colon matches "NAME". If it does then the left-hand side is used as programme title and the right-hand side as the name of the episode.
• title map "FROM" 'TO' — If the programme title starts with the string "FROM" then replace this part with the string "TO". The strings must be enclosed in single quotes ("'") or double quotes ("""). The title mapping occurs before the "series" command processing.
• title strip parental level — At the beginning of 2012 some programme descriptions started to include parental levels at the end of the title, e.g. "(S)". With this command all parental levels will be removed from the titles automatically. This removal occurs before the title mapping.

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

xmltv. go look at it, it's the whole ecosystem, iykyk.

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💅 AUTHORS 💅

Current ✨

• Stefan Becker "chemobejk at gmail dot com"
• Ville Ahonen "ville dot ahonen at iki dot fi"

Retired 🌙

• Matti Airas

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💀 BUGS 💀

The channels are identified by channel number rather than the RFC2838 form recommended by the XMLTV DTD. not me pointing out the DTD-recommended way and then doing something else entirely 🙈

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this was documented with perl v5.40.1 and dated 2025-04-19, in the TV_GRAB_FI(1p) era of history. mwah 💋 stay slay, go grab some Finnish TV listings ✨📺