• wjs018English
    1·
    28 days ago

    You probably just need to wait for some episodes to air. All that output looks fine to me. Some more details…

    When you run the episode module the first time is when it will discover any new shows and fetch all the episodes that are airing in the next days in the future (set in the [options] section).

    So, what this means is that if you run the episode module the first time, no posts will get created since it is only looking forward in time and not backwards. From that point forward, if you run the episode module again after the api-provided airing time (plus the configured delay parameter in the [post] section) for an episode, that is when a post will get created.

    For a reference on upcoming episodes, you can check out the airing page on anichart, which is fed using the same api.

    The reason that the episode module is only forward looking in time is that I found that the api gets way less reliable once you start looking at airing times in the past.

    A general flow of how the episode module operates in an ongoing manner:

    • When the episode module is run, all upcoming episodes are fetched for the configured time to look ahead
    • From this, show discovery happens by checking whether the shows the episodes belong to are already in the database (Shows table) or meet the discovery criteria configured to be added to the database
    • The previously fetched list of upcoming episodes are filtered and for any that belong to shows in the database, these are added to the database (UpcomingEpisodes table)
    • Now, with a database that is fully updated with airing times, the module will fetch any episodes from the UpcomingEpisodes table that have an airing time with a timestamp earlier in time than the current time. These are the episodes that have “aired.”
    • These aired episodes are then checked to see if the show is enabled or disabled in the database (also, if enabled, the previous episode for the show if it exists, is checked for its engagement criteria)
      • If the aired episode belongs to an enabled show and the previous episode meets the engagement criteria, then the bot will create a post (and edit previous posts as well as add it to the Episodes table in the database).
      • If the previous episode fails to meet engagement criteria, then no post is made and the show is disabled.
    • If no post is created for the show (for whatever reason), then the episode will be moved to the IgnoredEpisodes table in the database. This is the table that the bot pulls from for its user-requested threads via pm (the listen module)

    I think that about covers the episode module. That was done basically from memory as I can’t really dig into the code from this machine, so if something I said doesn’t add up or if a variable name is slightly different, that would be why.

    • WTreeMEnglish
      2·
      28 days ago

      You probably just need to wait for some episodes to air.

      I waited for new episodes and yes it is working now.

      A general flow of how the episode module operates in an ongoing manner

      Thanks for explaining the module in detail. If I understand it correctly

      1. the module checks all upcoming episodes
      2. filter those episodes according to Shows table and added to UpcomingEpisodes table
      3. episodes from UpcomingEpisodes table that have earlier timestamp than current time are marked as ‘aired’
      4. if criteria meets, the bot creates posts for those ‘aired’ episodes
      • wjs018English
        1·
        28 days ago

        That’s pretty much it! There are tons of shows going on at any given time, so I tried to add features to stem the flood of discussion posts. Some tips for managing things:

        Under the [options] section, I have discovery_enabled = false. I realize now that this was named poorly, but this doesn’t turn off discovery all together, instead, just makes sure that any new shows it does discover are disabled by default, meaning that it won’t make new posts for them as they air.

        You can use the disable module to mark shows as disabled in the database. I have instructions in the readme for how to disable different sets of shows (including just disabling everything).

        Speaking of disabling everything…that is how I start the new season of shows. I then make a thread about the upcoming season, asking people what they are planning to watch, and go through and enable each of those shows manually using the enable module. I think that overall this worked pretty well last season. Spoiler alert is that Monday’s general thread in the anime community will be the Summer version of that process.

        When a user requests a show via PM (using the listen module), it also sets the show as enabled. So, if you want to start discussion threads that way, by requesting aired shows one at a time via pm, that is another option.

        Finally, some additional tips on managing the backend of things:

        • I go through the scheduling process in the automation section of the readme. The listen and summary modules are run every 5 minutes while the episode is additionally run every 15 minutes.
        • On my system, I also added a third script that runs once a week at a time that doesn’t conflict with any of the other repeating scripts (I think mine is like 3:03 AM on a Sunday). This script runs the update module with the all parameter and runs the disable module with the finished parameter, just to do some housekeeping

        Some other things that pop into my head:

        • Since the database used is sqlite, it is simply a file on the filesystem. I back it up using rsnapshot. This is the page that I used to help me configure it. I haven’t had to use the backups yet, but it does give a little peace of mind.
        • I also periodically copy the database file onto a different machine (no automation here). I simply scp (linux) or WinSCP (Windows) over a copy. I often end up using this to help with development more than anything since it is nice to have a prepopulated database when testing new features.
        • If you want to browse the data in the database file to try to track down a problem or just explore how things work under the hood, then I recommend DB Browser, it’s a nice tool for people like me that are SQL noobs.
        • WTreeMEnglish
          2·
          28 days ago

          Thanks you for your tips. I will keep those in mind.

          Since the database used is sqlite, it is simply a file on the filesystem. I back it up using rsnapshot.

          Currently I am testing on my laptop so maybe I will just use rsync to backup to external drives for now.

          I recommend DB Browser

          Yesterday I was searching how to open sqlite file and found this and installed it. It is great to visually see how the data are stored in sqlite database.