UPDATED FOR NEW NETFLIX FORMAT 5/19/05
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Who knew there was so much interest in Netflix, and related plugins for MovableType? Just when I thought I was finished up tweaking Ben's original plugin to display the Netflix Queue, I began to get other requests for other lists and various features.
So, I have decided to just put three plugins in one zip file and name it, presumptuously, the Netflix Suite.
Here are the plugins enclosed:
NOTE: The Image Tags return a URL to the small image for each movie. This uses Netflix's bandwidth, and I don't recommend it. It has been heavily requested, though, so it is included.
NetflixQueue
Displays movies in your rental queue.
Available tags are:
<MTNetflixQueue>
<$MTNetflixQueueTitle$>
<$MTNetflixQueueURL$>
<$MTNetflixQueueImage$>
<$MTNetflixQueueGenre$>
<$MTNetflixQueueRating$>
<$MTNetflixQueueAvailability$>
<$MTNetflixQueuePosition$>
Additional arguments for <MTNetfilxQueue> are "lastn" "firstn" and "randomn"
These treat your queue as such, i.e., FIFO, but they allude to weblogs where
the "lastn" are the "n" most recent posts. In this plugin
, "lastn" returns the
list of "n" movies at the top of your queue, and "firstn" returns
the list of
"n" movies at the bottom. "randomn" returns "n" random
movies selected from your
queue. So, <MTNetflixQueue session_id = "<your session ID>" lastn
= "10"> will
return the next 10 movies you will be viewing. Caution: Use of the image tag
uses THEIR bandwith.
NetflixOutstanding
Displays list of movies you currently have on rental from NetFlix.
Available tags are:
<MTNetflixOutstanding>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingTitle$>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingURL$>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingImage$>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingGenre$>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingRating$>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingShipped$>
<$MTNetflixOutstandingArrival$>
Additional arguments for <MTNetfilxOutstanding> are "lastn" "firstn" and "randomn"
These treat your "oustanding" queue as such, i.e., FIFO, but they allude
to weblogs where
the "lastn" are the "n" most recent posts. In this plugin
, "lastn" returns the
list of "n" movies at the top of your "outstanding" queue,
and "firstn" returns the list of
"n" movies at the bottom. "randomn" returns "n" random
movies selected from your
"outstanding" queue. So, <MTNetflixOutstanding session_id = "<your
session ID>" lastn = "3"> will
return the next 3 movies you have out. Caution: Use of the image tag uses THEIR
bandwith.
Netflix History
Displays movies you have recently rented and presumably watched.
Available tags are:
<MTNetflixHistory>
<$MTNetflixHistoryTitle$>
<$MTNetflixHistoryURL$>
<$MTNetflixHistoryImage$>
<$MTNetflixHistoryShipDate$>
<$MTNetflixHistoryReturnDate$>
<$MTNetflixHistoryRating$>
<$MTNetflixHistoryRatingGraphic$>
An additional argument for <MTNetfilxHistory> is "lastn"
This treats your "history" queue as such, i.e., FIFO, but alludes
to weblogs where
the "lastn" are the "n" most recent posts. In this plugin
, "lastn" returns the
list of "n" movies at the top of your "history" queue.
So, <MTNetflixHistory session_id = "<your session ID>" lastn
= "3"> will
return the top 3 movies you have out.
Caution: Caution: Use of the image tag uses THEIR bandwith.
Download: NetflixSuite
Comments
123 Responses to NetFlix SuiteTrackbacks
- eclinkticism: NetFlix Suite NetflixSuite MovableType plugin...
Tracked at 2004 12 29 21:23:46 - eclecticism: NetFlix Suite I've just added a new page to the site (and linked it in the header navigation of every page): my Netflix queues.
Tracked at 2004 12 29 23:15:50 - :: Journal ::: NetFlix Suite I am in LOVE with NetFlix!!!! ♥! I'd heard about it for awhile now, but kept putting it off since... well... I work in a video store. But they have all the stuff we don't have! British stuff and obscure...
Tracked at 2005 04 01 03:08:55
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NetFlix Suite
Posted by Oscar on Wed, 9/24/03 at 05:12 PM
Filed under: •
MT & Web Design •
Comments: 123 Comments/Trackbacks
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pretty good if you like pickin'
August 11th, 2004 at 10:30 pm
Hi Oscar, thank you for such a quick response. My hosting plan doesn’t give me access to the error logs, but I’m starting to think that the problem is with the session ID. The one you see on the post is in fact what I got off the cookie NetflixShopperID yesterday. Am I looking at the wrong cookie?
August 11th, 2004 at 08:19 pm
Assuming that session_id is not your real one (since the real one is not in hexadecimal) and assuming the real one you use is correct, then your code is fine (as I’m sure you know).
So, then why isn’t it working? We need to trace the problem. The two most likely suspects are 1) permissions problem, 2) missing necessary Perl module.
Does the plugin give you any output or just blank? Can you get at your httpd_error log? (or equivalent) to see what error is being returned?
Also, do you know how to check and see which Perl modules are installed?
Feel free to email me your whole template with ID and I can test it here to be sure it’s good, but I’m guessing the problem is something like the permissions or Perl. Let me know. It really should work easily. And, again, error log is the best clue of all.
August 11th, 2004 at 08:03 pm
BTW, the extra space in the closing a tag is a typo and not the problem.
August 11th, 2004 at 07:52 pm
Hate to admit it, but I’ve been having trouble making this plugin work. The .pl is where it’s supposed to be, permissions are fine and I’ve triple-checked the session ID (including logging out and back in). I didn’t do anything fancy with the html around the code either:
June 30th, 2004 at 02:26 am
Ted, take a look at your source on that page.
Lines 757-61:
<div class="sidetitle">
Ted’s Recent Netflix Rental History
</div><br />
<div class="side">
<div align="center"
Close that last <div> in your template, so when rebuilt, you get:
<div class="sidetitle">
Ted’s Recent Netflix Rental History
</div><br />
<div class="side">
<div align="center">
Problem solved, eh?
June 29th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
Thanks, Oscar (and Jay)! The addition of the star ratings to your Netflix suite is really fantastic.
Just curious: Is anyone else having trouble getting the stars to show up in IE? They look fine in Firefox and Safari, but for some reason I can’t get any stars to appear in Explorer.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:29 am
A tip: You can resize the stars using CSS, although it may be a bit blurry. The default width and height is 92 and 15 respectively, so the width is 6.13*height. I’ve created my template like this:
<$MTNetflixHistoryRatingGraphic>
Then in my styles-site.css:
.netflix-stars img {
height: 1em;
width: 6.13em;
}
This makes them the height of the surrounding text, and they resize whenever the browser resizes the text. Click on my name to see it in use!
June 29th, 2004 at 10:45 am
Just commenting to re-subscribe.. and thanks Oscar for continuing to support MT after you switched to EE!
June 28th, 2004 at 09:50 pm
Okay, I have updated the plugins, adding a Rating tag (displays a text number of stars you gave the flick) and a RatingGraphic tag (uses Netflix’s StarBar javascript and graphics) to the History plugin. Also, added Jay’s idea of a “position” tag for Netflix Queue, so you can tell where in the queue a flick is, say if you are displaying a random selection. Enjoy!
June 27th, 2004 at 01:13 pm
I’ve got the ratings thing totally figured out now!
Using NetFlix’s StarBar javascript. Now it’s just a matter of folding that in. But, I’ve done all the mental heavy lifting this Sunday AM. I’ll email both of you the updated plugin for testing when I can get the time to put it together. Hopefully sometime in the coming week.
June 27th, 2004 at 10:55 am
Okay, I see what you guys are saying. The thing that makes this a bit of work is that the ratings are in a different place from the queue or the history. So, I’ll have to scrape two lists (urls), compare them, and make the rating available when there is a rating entered. As computer programming goes, of course, this is trivial, but it does mean restructuring the plugins significantly. But you are right - the rating is one of the more important pieces of information available.
What I really need is a free uninterrupted day to work on it. I will try to do what I can in the time I can find. I have already started working on the ratings scraping and building the necessary arrays. Hopefully I can get the whole thing put together sometime in this lifetime.
Thanks for the great input folks, and I’ll keep you posted.
June 27th, 2004 at 03:58 am
As far as I can tell, the NetFlix Ratings plug-in doesn’t let you just show the last movies you’ve rented ratings. That’s more what I would like to show. Ideally on my Netflix page, I would like to show the star rating that I gave it after the shipping information. That way people could see what I thought of the movie. Make sense? I don’t think there’s a way to do it with the other plug-in.
June 24th, 2004 at 06:22 pm
The thing about that plugin, as far as I understand it, is that it doesn’t distinguish between the movies in your recent rental history and your entire ratings feedback. Which is to say, if you’ve rated “The Godfather” four stars, but haven’t rented it anytime soon (or even at all through Netflix), it’ll still come up on your 4-star list. What would be more useful, in my opinion, is a mechanism that allows you to instantly display the rating you gave a movie upon returning it to Netflix. (I’m not sure this is something that every Netflix user takes advantage of, but I know that every time I get one of those movie-received emails, I automatically rate it.)
If I’m misunderstanding the Voytovich plugin, please let me know how I can use it to display the star-ratings on my recent-rental history.
June 24th, 2004 at 05:44 pm
Just so as not to re-invent the wheel. Is there anything wrong with Mike Voytovich’s NetflixRatings plugin?
June 24th, 2004 at 03:31 pm
To be honest, I forgot all about that, even though I had been meaning to take a look. I’ll try to at least look at it this afternoon and try to see what’s involved ... I’ll keep you posted.
June 24th, 2004 at 02:39 pm
I was wondering that about the starred ratings (for movies we’ve already seen), too. Your plugin is already awesome, but I think that feature would put it into the extremely awesome category. It’s useful to see the rental history, but from a blog reader’s standpoint, it would be more interesting to see the blogger’s actual evaluation of the flicks they’ve rented.
June 24th, 2004 at 03:04 am
Oscar, yep, my shopper ID had changed. It works perfectly now.
Have you had any time to look into pulling our star ratings for movies we’ve seen?
June 24th, 2004 at 01:25 am
Kymberlie - Mine seem, for once, to also work okay. Could something else have changed? Has your host upgraded Perl and lost some modules? Have you changed your template? Maybe your server was hobbled for some reason? Try another rebuild?
The plugins do seem okay though, as far as I can tell. Let me know if you discover anything.
Also, I’ll appreciate hearing from anyone else having trouble ...
Oh. also, Kymberlie, could your Shopper ID# have changed so somehow the one in the template no longer works? You might double check against a cookie from your last successful browser login to Netflix ... just a thought.
June 24th, 2004 at 12:40 am
hmm… mines still working.
June 24th, 2004 at 12:37 am
It seems that, once again, Netflix has changed their site. Now my history, queue, and outstanding won’t show.
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