EPG Grabber

Node.js CLI tool for grabbing EPG from different websites.

Installation

npm install -g epg-grabber

Quick Start

epg-grabber --config=example.com.config.js

example.com.config.js

module.exports = {
  site: 'example.com',
  channels: 'example.com.channels.xml',
  url: function (context) {
    const { date, channel } = context

    return `https://api.example.com/${date.format('YYYY-MM-DD')}/channel/${channel.site_id}`
  },
  parser: function (context) {
    const programs = JSON.parse(context.content)

    return programs.map(program => {
      return {
        title: program.title,
        start: program.start,
        stop: program.stop
      }
    })
  }
}

example.com.channels.xml

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<site site="example.com">
  <channels>
    <channel site_id="cnn-23" xmltv_id="CNN.us">CNN</channel>
  </channels>
</site>

Example Output

<tv>
  <channel id="CNN.us">
    <display-name>CNN</display-name>
    <url>https://example.com</url>
  </channel>
  <programme start="20211116040000 +0000" stop="20211116050000 +0000" channel="CNN.us">
    <title lang="en">News at 10PM</title>
  </programme>
  // ...
</tv>

CLI

epg-grabber --config=example.com.config.js

Arguments:

• -c, --config: path to config file
• -o, --output: path to output file or path template (example: guides/{site}.{lang}.xml; default: guide.xml)
• --channels: path to list of channels; you can also use wildcard to specify the path to multiple files at once (example: example.com_*.channels.xml)
• --lang: set default language for all programs (default: en)
• --days: number of days for which to grab the program (default: 1)
• --delay: delay between requests in milliseconds (default: 3000)
• --timeout: set a timeout for each request in milliseconds (default: 5000)
• --max-connections: set a limit on the number of concurrent requests per site (default: 1)
• --cache-ttl: maximum time for storing each request in milliseconds (default: 0)
• --gzip: compress the output (default: false)
• --debug: enable debug mode (default: false)
• --curl: display current request as CURL (default: false)
• --log: path to log file (optional)
• --log-level: set the log level (default: info)

Site Config

module.exports = {
  site: 'example.com', // site domain name (required)
  output: 'example.com.guide.xml', // path to output file or path template (example: 'guides/{site}.{lang}.xml'; default: 'guide.xml')
  channels: 'example.com.channels.xml', // path to list of channels; you can also use an array to specify the path to multiple files at once (example: ['channels1.xml', 'channels2.xml']; required)
  lang: 'fr', // default language for all programs (default: 'en')
  days: 3, // number of days for which to grab the program (default: 1)
  delay: 5000, // delay between requests (default: 3000)
  maxConnections: 200, // limit on the number of concurrent requests (default: 1)

  request: { // request options (details: https://github.com/axios/axios#request-config)

    method: 'GET',
    timeout: 5000,
    proxy: {
      protocol: 'https',
      host: '127.0.0.1',
      port: 9000,
      auth: {
        username: 'mikeymike',
        password: 'rapunz3l'
      }
    },
    cache: { // cache options (details: https://axios-cache-interceptor.js.org/#/pages/per-request-configuration)
      ttl: 60 * 1000 // 60s
    },

    /**
     * @param {object} context
     *
     * @return {string} The function should return headers for each request (optional)
     */
    headers: function(context) {
      return {
        'User-Agent':
          'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.130 Safari/537.36 Edg/79.0.309.71'
      }
    },

    /**
     * @param {object} context
     *
     * @return {string} The function should return data for each request (optional)
     */
    data: function(context) {
      const { channel, date } = context

      return {
        channels: [channel.site_id],
        dateStart: date.format('YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00-00:00'),
        dateEnd: date.add(1, 'd').format('YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00-00:00')
      }
    }
  },

  /**
   * @param {object} context
   *
   * @return {string} The function should return URL of the program page for the channel
   */
  url: function (context) {
    return `https://example.com/${context.date.format('YYYY-MM-DD')}/channel/${context.channel.site_id}.html`
  },

  /**
   * @param {object} context
   *
   * @return {string} The function should return URL of the channel logo (optional)
   */
  logo: function (context) {
    return `https://example.com/logos/${context.channel.site_id}.png`
  },

  /**
   * @param {object} context
   *
   * @return {array} The function should return an array of programs with their descriptions
   */
  parser: function (context) {

    // content parsing...

    return [
      {
        title, // program title (required)
        start, // start time of the program (required)
        stop, // end time of the program (required)
        sub_title, // program sub-title (optional)
        description, // description of the program (optional)
        category, // type of program (optional)
        season, // season number (optional)
        episode, // episode number (optional)
        date, // the date the programme or film was finished (optional)
        icon, // image associated with the program (optional)
        rating, // program rating (optional)
        director, // the name of director (optional)
        actor, // the name of actor (optional)
        writer, // the name of writer (optional)
        adapter, // the name of adapter (optional)
        producer, // the name of producer (optional)
        composer, // the name of composer (optional)
        editor, // the name of editor (optional)
        presenter, // the name of presenter (optional)
        commentator, // the name of commentator (optional)
        guest // the name of guest (optional)
      },
      ...
    ]
  }
}

Context Object

From each function in config.js you can access a context object containing the following data:

• channel: The object describing the current channel (xmltv_id, site_id, name, lang)
• date: The 'dayjs' instance with the requested date
• content: The response data as a String
• buffer: The response data as an ArrayBuffer
• headers: The response headers
• request: The request config
• cached: A boolean to check whether this request was cached or not

Channels List

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<site site="example.com">
  <channels>
    <channel site_id="cnn-23" xmltv_id="CNN.us">CNN</channel>
    ...
  </channels>
</site>

You can also specify the language and logo for each channel individually, like so:

<channel
  site_id="france-24"
  xmltv_id="France24.fr"
  lang="fr"
  logo="https://example.com/france24.png"
>France 24</channel>

How to use SOCKS proxy?

First, you need to install socks-proxy-agent:

npm install socks-proxy-agent

Then you can use it to create an agent that acts as a SOCKS proxy. Here is an example of how to do it with the Tor SOCKS proxy:

const { SocksProxyAgent } = require('socks-proxy-agent')

const torProxyAgent = new SocksProxyAgent('socks://localhost:9050')

module.exports = {
  site: 'example.com',
  url: 'https://example.com/epg.json',
  request: {
    httpsAgent: torProxyAgent,
    httpAgent: torProxyAgent
  },
  parser(context) {
    // ...
  }
}

Contribution

If you find a bug or want to contribute to the code or documentation, you can help by submitting an issue or a pull request.

License

MIT