File location in cab cookie?

[rtarver]

This may be a simple question, but it has me stumped. How do you access the 'file location' in a cab cookie? Specifically, I'm storing the last movie selection to a GVar from a cab pointed at a dvdprofiler repo, and need to extract the file location stored in the notes field. This is for a field write to the generic app control driver that will issue a play command to jriver MC via command line.

One step at a time. :-)

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

When a selection is made, the file location info is on of the runtime values that is passed. So, assuming you want to store the last selected one, that means it has to be selected, so should be able to use the location RTV and write that to the variable. Remember it's a path, so use the:

%(xxx, "^1")

form of the token to insure the slashes aren't treated as escape characters.

[rtarver]

Feeling my age today,

I can get a detail window to load in an overlay when I select from a cab, it will show my cover art and cookie items such as title etc. but, when I try and setvariable from the onsetcollection (from cab) and use an rtv like locationinfo, I only get ?????.'s in my variabletext widget tied to that global variable.

When I try the same with the variable widget and the cab in the same template (no overlays) I can get it to work.

Must show my unfamiliarity with these containers.

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

Just for a test, just set up a static text widget, give it name, and do a set text command on it, and pass it the file location runtime value in the on select collection. That should show it if it has been set. Of course if it's an individual song, then the location info is only available at the item level because each one has its own location. But for movies, the location info is at the collection level.

[rtarver]

Dean,

I'll try again tonight. I did manage to get the variable text widget to follow my global variable as set by the RTV. At least I think that's the way I did it. This would work when the cab and widget were in the same template. I think I'm getting the command passed correctly to the generic app control driver, but it provides very little event logging.

FWIW, when debugging and reloading templates in the viewer, sometimes I get older templates. ie, I've made a change and reloaded and get the new version. Then I'll make another change to the new version and reload... I get the old version (in the viewer). I have to open/close a few other templates before I can get the corrected template to load.

I think I'm on the latest beta version, though I've had this occur on the previous version too.

Russ

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

See the latest upgrade guide, search for caching. Templates are cached locally now. If you want to turn that off for testing, there is an option in the IV (under Tools I think) to enable or disable that local caching. Without it, it will hang onto previously loaded templates for up to a minute. Normally that's good, but for testing purposes you'll want to turn it off so that you get the latest changes as soon as they are made.

The RIVA system doesn't have a way to do this yet. I've added the code to support it, but the RIVA clients have to implement it.

[rtarver]

Dean,

I've figured out the command line functions from a true cmd window, and get the correct movie to play each time.

Format in that window is:

Mc17.exe /Play "\\Storage\movie.mkv|Zone=2"

How would I format this in the value of the startwithparms field write of the generic app control?

The double quotes are there to escape the backslashes I think.

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

The quotes in that case are probably because of the | character, which would otherwise be handled specially by the command line process. It's a piping operator on the command line. But you'd still generally use them any time you are going to generate a command line from user provided data, since that data might have a space in it.

But you'd just replace the \\storage\movie.mkv bit with the location info RTV, using the form indicated above, to prevent the expanded path value from being further processed.

You can also test that whole thing by generating it into a variable and writing it to a static text variable, or just watching it in the action trace window, to see what you are getting.

[rtarver]

I've been trying to hardcode it into a command, just to get that part done right first, then move onto an rtv. I'll research the action trace option... haven't ever worked with it.

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

The action trace shows you all of the commands, with everything expanded out, so you can see what the actual results are when you reference variables or fields or runtime values. So it's quite useful for testing IV actions.