Trakt.TV & Subtitles - A Google Apps Script Project

Before I Get to the Technical Stuff

My wife and I like watching TV series, but we like choosing what and when, not what the satellite/cables providers dictate. This is why we mostly use XBMC for that. XBMC is great - you get all the new episodes from a variety of providers, quickly and with good quality. Since we're not native English speakers we also like having subtitles. XBMC is great for that as well.

A while ago, before we started using XBMC, I used to go once in a while browsing for new episodes, subtitles, etc. It was frustrating... XBMC solved most of it. I also found Trakt.TV a great tool for keeping track of what we haven't watched yet.

The only part that was left is keeping track of the subtitles availability. For that I had two options: start watching the episode, then try to find matching subtitles. The other option was to look for the subtitles in the providers' websites before that. Both options aren't nice. There are some series that we don't really mind watching without subtitles, but some we wont watch until they have subtitles. In those cases it is frustrating to go through all that work just to find there are no subtitles available...

This is why I started this project. The goal was to give a view which consolidates my shows' progress (from Trakt.TV) with the availability of subtitles for each un-watched episode. I chose Google Apps Script because of two reasons: 1- it is quite simple, it gives a variety of built-in services and it's free. 2- I did not know it and wanted to see what it has to offer.

Technical Overview

OK, so as I mentioned before, the project is based mainly on Google Apps Script. Although it has quite a lot native services, I had some gaps of missing functionality I needed to fill. The project currently includes the following modules/services:

1. TrakTV & Subtitles-
   This script is published as a webapp. It is the main module, it implements the model generation and the UI rendering of the service.
2. EnahancedCacheService- (post)
   This is a service for adding more features to GAS's native CacheService. It mainly supports various value types (not just string: e.g. number, boolean, object) and supports values larger than 128KB.
3. TraktTVClient-
   This is a client for the Trakt.TV REST API. It currently implements only what is really needed for my needs, but it can be enhanced with much more quite easily if needed.
4. SubsCenterOrgClient-
   This is a client for the SubsCenter.org subtitles provider. Since this provider has no API, so instead it parses the website - only what is currently required.
5. OpenSubtitlesOrgClient-
   This is a client for the OpenSubtitles.org subtitles provider. This provider has an API based on XML-RPC.
6. XmlRpcMessageService- (post)
   This is a service for creating and handling XML-RPC messages. It lets the user work with simple JavaScript objects instead of the verbose XML. Not all data types defined in the specification are supported by this implementation.

In the next posts I will elaborate on some of the services mentioned above.