Web Interface

[coffmanrunner]

I know that a web interface would be a crap load of work but maybe start off small and simple and slowly grow it? It would be really nice to open up a few ports on my router so that no matter where I was I could go to http://myipadress:portnumber and add .nzb's / see status on downloads/par/unrar

[pilotsnipes]

Yeah, I think this would be good too

However, really, with the ease of which you can add a vnc client/server to your computer which allows you to do EVERYTHING on your home pc as if you were there, what really is the point?

For those of you who say, "Ah but you need a vncviewer to see your home pc, so I can't use my browser", not really. Ultravnc, has a webpage support that you can use to view everything via explorer/firefox/other crappy browser.


Give it a shot.

[coffmanrunner]

Yes I currently use UltraVNC but im thinking about like I want to check really fast or let my friends use my usenet access if im not using it. I have written PHP (+ mysql) before for side projects and I think I might be able to find a way to make a simple interface (in PHP) that lets users upload .nzb's and it could just drop them into the dir that alt.binz auto-checks for downloads and then (and I guess this is what I'm really asking for) if alt.binz could have some sort of status file or a way to request a status file. In PHP I could run a command that asked alt.binz to write a status xml file or something and then parse that data onto a web page so that I could see what was downloading, how fast, ETA (for all and per item), unrar (ETA/Status) just basic info to "check up" on my downloads. I am going to be getting a new phone soon that I will buy a data plan for and It would be really nice to be able to pull up a website that had my status and be like of yea I want to download XXX file and drop a nzb in. - Does this make any sense? I already have XAMPP installed on my machine so it wouldn't be too difficult to set up if I had a status file

[Hecks]

Alt.Binz already outputs the altbinz_status.xml file if you enable it in Setup > Miscellaneous #2.  It contains basic connection info, and you can toggle Connect on/off by editing it.  Otherwise there's the mIRC plugin for monitoring the queue via IRC that might be of some use to you.

In the absence of a proper Alt.Binz API, what would be really handy is a way of parsing the queue.abz file ... somebody wrote a .NET dll for it, can't remember where it is now, but anyway such a thing is possible.

Have you looked at SABnzbd?  It's built entirely in Python with its own mini web server, driven by a web interface.  Maybe Python is the better way to go here ...

[coffmanrunner]

hmm maybe your right. I was going to use my home PC as a mini-server for this project but this would save me time and energy. I have hosting on Bluehost so now i need to see if SABnzbd can be set up to work there... that way it is downloaded to my server and then I can ftp it back to my house or... idk this is obviously a bunch of jumbled ideas in my head, I want everything to stay on my home network for this cause I dont want to download to an external site... Ill post back what I decide and how to set it up if anyone is interested

[Pimmetje]

I like the idea of a webinterface also 

[noons]

Not sure why you all dont just use sabnzbd then since its completely web based. Its free supported and updated.

[karn]

Hey Hecks,

It was me that wrote the .NET DLL (and i still have the source).

I also wrote a PHP class that parsed it iirc. Will have to have a look around for it.

[Hecks]

Hooray for php!  Look forward to it.

[karn]

I can't find the PHP class but I can always write it up again. Wouldn't take long as I can port most of it from the C# code.

[Hecks]

That would be incredibly helpful, I think.

[karn]

Hey sorry for the silence - been a bit preoccupied. I'll try and get something working for PHP.  It will probably just be a collection of functions to decode the queue.abz file into an array.

[no mercy]

any news?


webinterface is a nice idea

[ericab]

i would be willing to donate again.... for a web interface.

excellent idea.

[karn]

I occasionally surface

http://www.karn.co.uk/files

I uploaded 2 versions of the abzQueueReader, the original .Net DLL and a PHP Port (I cannot guarantee the quality of the PHP port - it's been a while but should be fully functional.)

I'm still meaning to write a simple web front end around these (python would in my opinion be the better, and possibly more distributable option, and it wouldn't be too difficult to rewrite the reader in python) but I have yet to get around to doing so. Would probably be just a reader/writer to the status.xml file (to pause/connect/disconnect etc) and show the current queue and progress, modifying the queue would be possible but would have to work like this:

client goes into queue modify mode
client closes abz (either through windows API and abz subsequently writes queue OR waits till the next queue write and kills abz's process)
client backs up and makes changes to queue file
client restarts abz.

Quite a lot of hassle, so I wouldn't bother myself (unless some form of API is added for simple queue manipulation, i.e. move collection up/down, pause collection.)
Most of the reason for wanting a front end is to add collections to the queue (imo) and possibly monitor progress - which would be easily possible.