[28-06-10][App] Flix Cinema listings for UK, FR, DE, ES, IT, US/Canada, Australia

Flix is a Cinema Listings application for Windows Mobile.

Features include:
- Yahoo based
- Search based on Postcode or town
- GPS "Where am I" lookup
- Google Maps link from Cinema Info screen
- Call cinema direct from the app.
- Movies list cast info, Synopsis, runtime, and (optionally) a poster if Yahoo has one.
- Download multiple locations
- Ignore cinemas you don't visit
- Schedule updates with commandline switch
- In built SMS

Version history:
1.1.0.0 2010-06-28 (Current)
-Fix for Australian listings not working.

1.0.9.9 2010-03-09
-Further fixes for Italy.
-Better Italian translations (thanks Bbonzz!)

1.0.9.8 2010-03-08
-Fixed problem with some areas in Allocine
-New datasource for Italy (may be some odd results here, please let me know if it's ok!)
-Fixed the "update" command line parameter for auto-updating.

1.0.9.7 2010-02-28
-Fixed bugs in new France-Allocine download
-Added "Reset" to Config page. Deletes all data files so Flix is like a fresh-install again.

1.0.9.6 2010-02-27
-Added initial support for Australia
-French users can now Allocine instead of Yahoo (pick as separate country in Config!)
Allocine seems to have one or two bugs - working on these...
-Fixed a couple of bugs in US/Canada downloads
-Movie Synopsis now finger-scrolls instead of scrollbar
-Added movie age rating for UK, US, Aus... (others in next release...)
-Fixed some display problems in SMS Sending on WVGA
-Hopefully sorted German character encoding problem!
-Download can be cancelled (experimental... )
-New Splash screen and Logo

1.0.9.5 2010-01-18
Fix for changes at Yahoo Italian site.

1.0.9.4 2009-12-19
-Fixed French lookups
-Moved "cast" to it's own Tab in movie info
-Added SMS sending (this is alpha, see here

1.0.9.3 2009-10-02
-Fixed US/Canada only downloading first cinema
-'Under the skin' change to list drawing so movie titles/show times wrap without needing extra list items (prep for next version)

1.0.9.2 2009-09-21
-Fixed download for US/Canada due to Yahoo change.
-Changed Italy URL (although it still seems to not find stuff a lot when I test it)
-New version of scroller control
-When viewing showtimes, you can tap the movie/cinema title to view it. (Showtimes button will be missing at this level, otherwise you could drill down forever!)

1.0.9.1 2009-08-25
-Fixed adding cinema to ignore list
-Stop device sleeping during update to help download reliability

1.0.9.0 2009-08-22
-Fixed some problems with Canada support - is now listed as a separate country, so existing users should go into Config and re-select!
-Fixed problem with some Italian listings where a movie was showing on more than one screen
-Fixed support for multiple locations in US/Canada
-Movie and Cinema index now uses a scroller rather than the "left/right" button for a quicker, nicer interface.

1.0.8.5 2009-08-14
-Fix French code to deal with change to Yahoo display of no cinemas found

1.0.8.4 2009-08-13
-Support for U.S. / Canada
-Some bugfixes to parsing of data
-Change showtime lookup to avoid occasional duplicates
-Added "update" command line switch; use with something like CTScheduler Lite or RunEveryday to auto-update.
-Icon should look a bit sharper

1.0.7.0 2009-07-13
-Now supports Spain and Italy.
-Download multiple locations (separate using ";" for example: London;PE1 1AR;Portsmouth)
-Ignore cinemas you don't want - after the first download, tap the new "ignore" button on the cinema to stop it downloading in future.
-Manage ignored cinemas from the config page
-Bug in Google Maps loading fixed
-Display of accented characters etc. in movie descriptions fixed
-Improved French translations (thanks arturobandini!)
-French listings should show language abbreviations where available

1.0.6.0: 2009-06-28
-Now supports France and Germany
-Google Maps loading should work if it's installed in non-std locations
-Where Am I function now uses online Geocoding to work in the new countries
-Some improvements to parsing behind the scenes

2009-06-05
Initial public release, UK/Eire only



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Flix has been reviewed on PocketNow and BestWindowsMobile

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Download Flix:

I've updated the first post with details on the new version of Flix, 1.0.7.0

Please let me know of any problems you find!

I've only done a little testing of Spain and Italy - I noticed with Spain especially that it often didn't seem to find much for a given town. If you encounter this, please visit the Spain Yahoo site http://es.movies.yahoo.com/ and try the same location as you put in Flix - if you get the same result, then Flix is not broken

If anyone would like to improve the translations, then please pm me.


Next up will be support for the US/Canada hopefully. That will be version 1.0.8.0.

In addition will be some interface changes users have requested, but these may wait for 1.0.9.0, depending on how long the new country support takes me!

I've also only played with multiple locations a little - but they should work as it basically calls the same routines for each location specified.

Split multiple locations using a semi-colon ( without any spaces.

Thanks for all the comments (good and bad) so far!

I'm starting to look at adding US/Canada to Flix.

The Yahoo Movies site for those areas is significantly different to the European based ones, and one thing I've found so far is the sheer volume of information, and I thought I'd ask here what you guys feel is the way ahead...

Being from the UK, I naturally popped '90210' into Yahoo to get some results up.

This returns 119 cinemas spread across 12 pages, and that's only showtimes for the current day, not the coming week as per the Euro site. So, pulling all this data out would be pretty slow and memory hungry in all likeliness.

So, i'm thinking of maybe downloading just the first page results, but for all coming days; however I don't know the relevance of the results. Can anyone offer some information on how the cinema list is related to the zip? Is the first result the closest and they slowly move "outwards" in distance? In which case it's perhaps ok to stick to the first page... or are they in a pretty random order? If the latter, then a lot of people might find that their usual theater doesn't come up...

I'm aware 90210 is probably a pretty extreme example, but i'm curious as to some pointers on how the data coming back is relevant...

I'll shortly be releasing support for US and Canada - it's about done. Also in that version will be an 'update' command line switch so that the download can be scheduled once a week automatically (using something like CTScheduler Lite or RunEveryday.

After that, I'd like to spruce up the interface for the next version, but if there's something specific you're looking for, let me know and I'll see if it can be added.

Flix has just been updated - see the first post

Main new feature is the addition of support for the US and Canada, but existing users may also find the "update" command line switch useful. If Flix is started with this switch, it will run, update, then quit. Schedule it overnight once a week and you won't have to manually update again!

There have also been a few under the skin improvements, mainly in the parsing of information.

For more advanced users, you can pre-ignore cinemas before updating for the first time, rather than updating and then ignoring them. This option is on the manage cinemas screen (just click "New" at the bottom). You'll need the ID number from the URL of your cinema to be ignored, so head off to Yahoo to find it.

As ever - if Flix doesn't find cinemas you expect, please visit the Yahoo movies site for your country and enter the same location to check what comes up.

Hi,

At what point did the error come up? Could you also see if there is extra information on the detail button?
Thanks!

Thanks - can you let me know what location you used so I can debug the code? Thank you

OK, that is good you fixed it, although the error should still not show up. If it cannot find anything for the postal code, you should get a friendly message, so I will still check this and fix it

OK, I can check that the ' above the e doesn't cause a problem.

However I checked the locations you gave me on fr.movies.yahoo.com and neither Liévin or 62800 show anything for me, so I don't think Flix would show anything either.


EDIT: OK, the error you got was because Yahoo have changed the message that is shown when no cinema found. Flix didn't see this so still tried to process the data. A new version will be uploaded soon