Jumpy: Jump into Python (and onto XBMC) Updated 22 Sep 2012

[infidel]

PMS-Jumpy (Java Underlay for Modules in PYthon) is a framework for scripts or other external processes to plug into PMS, primarily to

• add folders and media items to the xmb.
• act as user-defined external players.

The API is accessible from python via jumpy's python module, or from other languages via system calls. Interaction is through a localhost socket managed by py4j.

Jumpy began with my having grown tired of occasionally poaching stuff 'by hand' from xbmc addons for use in PMS, and deciding to see if I could mock the xbmc plugin API itself so as to run these addons under PMS as-is. The result is Jumpy plus jumpy-xbmc, an included set of python modules to 'jump' the xbmc addons.

Jumpy-xbmc works with most xbmc video addons: Hulu, Free Cable, Al Jazeera, PBS, Academic Earth, YouTube, and many more. Addons are 'mostly' functional in the sense that all content is shown but interactive features that require user input are inactive.

Jumpy itself is general-purpose, of course, and you can use it to plug your own scripts/commands, python or other, into PMS as well.


Jumpy-0.2.3 - 22 September 2012

• misc bugfixes to jumpy-xbmc and webreader.
• new Windows 1-click installer for Jumpy and all tools.

Jumpy-0.2.2 - 5 September 2012

• a config panel in the gui, finally.
• new feature: scripts as players.
• numerous API additions.
• new player scripts:
  
  
  • webreader - browse snapshots of your web pages.
    
    • requires PMS 1.70+ and phantomjs.
    • look on the xmb under Jumpy/Examples/Web Reader for examples
      (if Examples is missing see Note 1 below).
  • text - play your text files as video.
    • find a '.txt' file somewhere and click on it.

Download and unzip to your plugins folder. See also the new Windows Quick Setup.
Readme
Code


Note 1: if you already have a jumpy-scripts.ini in your PMS profile folder, temporarily rename it and restart. Jumpy will write a new default ini with the examples included, then merge your original ini by hand.

Note 2: when reporting bugs please set logging to TRACE and attach PMS.conf + debug.log + jumpy.log + jumpy-scripts.ini + pmsencoder.log together as one zip file (or use the DbgPack plugin).

[SharkHunter]

Infidel - you beat me to it had this planned along time ago but ended up doing other stuff.. Will look into this further..

[infidel]

Hopefully this will lighten the load for Channels a bit, Sharkhunter. I remember you mentioned setting up a jython interface.

[SharkHunter]

Hopefully this will lighten the load for Channels a bit, Sharkhunter. I remember you mentioned setting up a jython interface.

Maybe I'll be out of work

I'll check this out asap I get SHB some more stable (I found a rather nasty bug in the PMS core which still hides from me). I think I'll include this in SHB as well, since this is what I want myself...

[voguemaster]

Hi Infidel,

Great work on the plugin! I installed it and can see all add-ons I have from XBMC, well, almost everything.

Since I'm using addons for Israeli VOD sites, the content is many times in hebrew. Now, sometimes the PS3 will just display
underscores instead of characters, other times it won't find anything. The plugins work correctly with XBMC.

Now I realize the PS3 doesnt have hebrew support and thats not going to change anytime soon. However, I'd like to address two things:

1. In XBMC you have a thumbnail showing you what the program is. If we could do the same on the PS3 somehow it would be great.
2. Find out why on some occasions there are no titles to play even though in XBMC they show up nicely.

BTW - I found a bug that if you enter the same category another time, all the titles or subcategories are appended to whats there. Effectively
this means every time you enter some add-on directory you will have duplicates.


What I'm basically asking is this - how can I debug your plugin ? I'm a very experienced developer and know Java well. I'd like to fix the aforementioned
issues since I already have everything set up. What do you think ?

[infidel]

Thanks voguemaster!

1. In XBMC you have a thumbnail showing you what the program is. If we could do the same on the PS3 somehow it would be great.

See if the updated xbmc modules (above) help with this. I'm somewhat hampered by the fact that my Sony bluray doesn't support video thumbs, so I can only test whether thumbs are working by browsing PMS in xbmc.

I found a bug that if you enter the same category another time, all the titles or subcategories are appended to whats there.

This may be due to the addon itself, I haven't had this happen to me yet though what sometimes happens is that a http get request for a bad url causes a 'not found' error and the site redirects us to its home page, in which case the top site menu is redisplayed.

how can I debug your plugin ? I'm a very experienced developer and know Java well.

Feel free, of course, any help is appreciated! The relevant code is in python though, as you can see, and not commented much. The important functions are xbmcplugin.addDirectoryItem() and xbmcplugin.setResolvedUrl(), where the addon reports a url and we forward it to PMS.

In general the first thing is to look in jumpy.log to get an idea of what the problem with the particular addon might be. Btw If you want to post an excerpt from your log here please remember to search & replace any usernames or passwords with "####" first.

[SharkHunter]

Against all good knowledge a new SHB (SHB30) is out less than a day after SHB29 which includes Jumpy AND Python AND py4j!!! So the real easy way to get this is just to install SHB30 and then start fetching those XMBC plugins!

[infidel]

Thanks Sharkhunter, much simpler this way!

[Hackashaq]

Against all good knowledge a new SHB (SHB30) is out less than a day after SHB29 which includes Jumpy AND Python AND py4j!!! So the real easy way to get this is just to install SHB30 and then start fetching those XMBC plugins!

Hi SharkHunter. Quick question, should SHB30 Jumpy plugin work on Windows 7 x64? I can see the Jumpy channel on my PS3, but the folder is empty.
I should see the demo addon at least, right?
Also, on the same PC, I have the latest XBMC nightly build working with several addons. These should show up in the Jumpy folder on PS3, correct?

Thanks for any help!

[infidel]

Hi Hackashaq. Have you added 'python.path' to your PMS.conf? In SHB30 python is located in the 'extras' subfolder.