Greasemonkey Script. Play BBC iPlayer via XBMC

The BBC iPlayer plugin for XBMC works really well. In my experience, It’s much more stable (if less fancy looking) than the official Wii application. The only downside is that as with most XBMC video plugins, the navigation can be a little clunky.

I’ve written a small Greasemonkey script which adds a ‘Send to XBMC’ button to any iPlayer episode page. The script has a couple of requirements but it’s fairly easy to get up and running in a matter of minutes. When clicked, the script will invoke the iPlayer plugin on the target XBMC and start playing the relevant episode.

This works for both TV and Radio streams.

Requirements

The first requirement is that obviously you’ll need an XBMC Media Center which is network accessible and can access the Internet. The second glaringly obviously requirement is that you need to have the BBC iPlayer XBMC plugin installed. This greasemonkey script assumes the default plugin folder name of ‘iPlayer’.

If you haven’t enabled the Web Server in your XBMC Network Settings, you will need to do this. The script works by making an HTTP request to the XBMC HTTP API in order to invoke the iPlayer plugin.

There’s a single configuration option for the host name or IP address of your XBMC. This is configurable via a User Script Command (Hint: right click the Greasemonkey status bar icon)

Teh codez

// ==UserScript==
// @name           BBC IPlayer Send to XBMC
// @namespace      http://userscripts.org/users/218421
// @include        http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/*
// ==/UserScript==

GM_registerMenuCommand("Change XBMC Host for IPlayer",set_xbmc_host);
if (GM_getValue("XBMC_HOST")==undefined) {
		set_xbmc_host;
}

function hasClass(ele,cls) {
	return ele.className.match(new RegExp('(\\s|^)'+cls+'(\\s|$)'));
}

function addClass(ele,cls) {
	if (!this.hasClass(ele,cls)) ele.className += " "+cls;
}

function removeClass(ele,cls) {
	if (hasClass(ele,cls)) {
    	var reg = new RegExp('(\\s|^)'+cls+'(\\s|$)');
		ele.className=ele.className.replace(reg,' ');
	}
}

getpid = function(){
	return pid = document.location.toString().split('/')[5];
}

play = function(e){
	e.preventDefault();
	var xbmc_host = GM_getValue("XBMC_HOST");
	var i = new Image();
	i.src = 'http://'+xbmc_host+'/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=PlayFile(plugin://video/IPlayer/?pid='+getpid()+')';
}

init = function(){
	var tools = document.getElementById('episodeTools');

	var list = tools.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
        removeClass(list,'no-badge');

	var a = document.createElement('a');
	a.setAttribute('href','#');
	a.addEventListener('click', play, false);
	var p = document.createElement('p');
        p.setAttribute('class','hd-link');
	p.appendChild(a);

        a.style.backgroundImage = "url('data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAJUAAAAaCAAAAACbL0GeAAAACXBIWXMAAAsTAAALEwEAmpwYAAADGGlDQ1BQaG90b3Nob3AgSUNDIHByb2ZpbGUAAHjaY2BgnuDo4uTKJMDAUFBUUuQe5BgZERmlwH6egY2BmYGBgYGBITG5uMAxIMCHgYGBIS8/L5UBFTAyMHy7xsDIwMDAcFnX0cXJlYE0wJpcUFTCwMBwgIGBwSgltTiZgYHhCwMDQ3p5SUEJAwNjDAMDg0hSdkEJAwNjAQMDg0h2SJAzAwNjCwMDE09JakUJAwMDg3N+QWVRZnpGiYKhpaWlgmNKflKqQnBlcUlqbrGCZ15yflFBflFiSWoKAwMD1A4GBgYGXpf8EgX3xMw8BSMDVQYqg4jIKAUICxE+CDEESC4tKoMHJQODAIMCgwGDA0MAQyJDPcMChqMMbxjFGV0YSxlXMN5jEmMKYprAdIFZmDmSeSHzGxZLlg6WW6x6rK2s99gs2aaxfWMPZ9/NocTRxfGFM5HzApcj1xZuTe4FPFI8U3mFeCfxCfNN45fhXyygI7BD0FXwilCq0A/hXhEVkb2i4aJfxCaJG4lfkaiQlJM8JpUvLS19QqZMVl32llyfvIv8H4WtioVKekpvldeqFKiaqP5UO6jepRGqqaT5QeuA9iSdVF0rPUG9V/pHDBYY1hrFGNuayJsym740u2C+02KJ5QSrOutcmzjbQDtXe2sHY0cdJzVnJRcFV3k3BXdlD3VPXS8Tbxsfd99gvwT//ID6wIlBS4N3hVwMfRnOFCEXaRUVEV0RMzN2T9yDBLZE3aSw5IaUNak30zkyLDIzs+ZmX8xlz7PPryjYVPiuWLskq3RV2ZsK/cqSql01jLVedVPrHzbqNdU0n22VaytsP9op3VXUfbpXta+x/+5Em0mzJ/+dGj/t8AyNmf2zvs9JmHt6vvmCpYtEFrcu+bYsc/m9lSGrTq9xWbtvveWGbZtMNm/ZarJt+w6rnft3u+45uy9s/4ODOYd+Hmk/Jn58xUnrU+fOJJ/9dX7SRe1LR68kXv13fc5Nm1t379TfU75/4mHeY7En+59lvhB5efB1/lv5dxc+NH0y/fzq64Lv4T8Ffp360/rP8f9/AA0ADzT6lvFdAAAAIGNIUk0AAHolAACAgwAA+f8AAIDpAAB1MAAA6mAAADqYAAAXb5JfxUYAAAZ8SURBVHjazJd/bBTXEcc/sz4bOziBI/xIczaEa3GBhlJik1PqxinJ8UdCG7XXOFEFKlClpm1Ei9TCVbJCFCTAalRV+UEjoE2RCkritIZWUVFilCbND2olVCSiENIaCMFJXIF/7NrY3Pnt9I+3u7cOqH/APzxp9ebNm5n33ZnZ2TcCM8srFEQRBcHS4ROwQVBBiYZotBVjBIJxQ9aEqBCcoFZyvHrpnGLhNMLC0wUBVLDiwQJAxRLWZsjD4rEwSxgk3LFi1k4ch4RclECK0H7wgKATat+Vz/cV67jsEaEIRrTUurv2fhp7mdCTJUAxHRyNSPig/Hpncv8VgIpCqpa0ByvAwu8/PTUWcw0piYRLr4bGWXX9k5wEVzoE1QCKiNi1kqJmyfjTQFVBEItNI5yCNRGKJhJRJOLzpabxmR2bdVwwFcDxmQnVVQ4UC4qjiKJQNqFYFBXEFy2rLBRBQMRAYgIIQyGsKALhCaKXnmLfJkEKB+k56ddVigy8t/9DFWXOHQumOkotrMiBFD55/cUhQdHyJUu+UDV6srNTHT9xx51zqgqnOl/2BZ9rsk03TYCyIxvCt8503WKPStXQdTmuEq3smCaAjjzVTvKhe8qJvjwb35Mb33d8blk3z6ocfPRcw0/nWv2Dj/Qjt/9klv0eNrwCwD8zZTU9nwO4blPrsmXfdY9dOnVW/a5wGIBc5vBFaSVjH8xPFMShvPGUeSpTxthIsfetWY4/MDI6MlohTGl6dZBvbp0BQ8OVUDuvetN08EYqRWpvfsl87+HJIu7waPdjf7MWP6kJkz2X7elI5Vq7ev5vYq9a++Sl0v3tFUkqb1tTLRuK0/hoz6ERBhbcrafW+CAzmr+l16/7edPDwru7jxZmrW6U+no4tOf9sdkPLmbRN4bXwpvP/qeAW7KYCEJxK5u7ILd0F2RrvE6XVM0ZybodwHeuPRZEK5UilekitZQzB8ZFstCLfHj6V4nJcHDjAKLUIT0DAIObx+4j8+X1wotbijDwsyduBfa2+dC/bttXZE0F7NpWqhkxVEoPrR1dmzcDv8nAyh/1LF3blYF5m2nNQY9VWJojl6vPtQLHfuzGPnoBeOtQBk7+4ryAaC36UVDIn7m7umL9DRzbUhTA/HaxcLjNF6DwzJM6RfT1bZ+trA64nue6W4+k1u7e1+h692T21z2WWu5e4MaGleS8mbnBO++q5oLreu6+53hu1aTWwZVznp/3Q9fzXNdzPdf1XNfzXM/7N8LTnw65njvo3aAcdz3Pcz331MfqzIWdfUOu53ru0WHYMTA05Hqud2RUwN/meZ7reVbadT0gE+Jr2d6t2ky75rNZ7SOveVAlr23QpnkA8pq3jKT2xaqoiIgI7cb3ahARIXHUmCwiiFB5whjjj6StJLPPm8GUVWH+qDHmzLVWUCKHZYJsT2aTOyDf1vxCkjYgGXNnP/SP828/9JckJPwfT7kdPT9sE+KaaijYusCiGkB7/4v918+aQO/ZQHdWOVAYC68kUfVxAlTt29NwgiT93C9TGuJxTkN6HKY0pDlx0R9x03QkOccCHR2GpmDnkTLOKx8PBemXhtMXgq05ADfOK+Vm5C07dWp3vq1PW2jWd7Ltmo8imFZtadEogu3Z+j7NZ98JGEDg+IotvjHGvFxpuX8wfu/NAJXbjd+7x5jdNmgOW43ZgYgjjvC48Y0xnVXWkCMRpgBVslNVtQ1oU9XOZISKFtXu7QGIdJ9qtr5btQQKIZn5atND/zD++QPGmDdWNDYuhNuMMT3rGuoffNs35v4njHk0zL4/GbM+pPebsePGN28+sGjhXAe5CBWks9lkQNSPi006W6KT2XqgPhvPu9WnjDHGmHP3lf/dGOMbU+yYyEbjG7saWcNrxv96kOD81Zhvh/Srxizba3zjm+LIKykugepyxwMWU+GPX4KpLxgLZTVsGDTG933zxteYeM48HrhHWG7MotBXPzBm9sQ9xhjj+/7vS6iu/Hp1058NuP868B6Onm1uWpquAOcs/HJfc8M07+hLncqk1/6yKwr4nop7z4T0zrJs//DynffOn6g4buwqtpirbyxmQdlVByqxgOmpqw1WWWqG8MW+kdgNzdZfpdQFRr1f2CDF+jEEJcaxsoFUSThquIJNjVVNjc1WvmrKcYEZ1yWCDk8DYS21oUEHWLpaauwiGiqEd9agpQk7m7Bz/GwrOt5CqWO0C+P28r8BALszeAljb82XAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC')";

	tools.appendChild(p);
}

setTimeout(init,2000);

function set_xbmc_host() {
	GM_setValue("XBMC_HOST",window.prompt("Enter your XBMC IP address", "192.168.0."));
}

The script can be obtained from userscripts.org – http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/85753