Roku Developer Program

[TDave00]

I like how the videoplayer example populates a list of categories and videos. I can use that example to build my channel, but I was wanting to include a livestream video in line with the categories (on the main page) so that the user doesn't have to unnecessarily select the livestream category and then select the livestream subcategory and then select the video.

Can anyone point me in the right direction about how to implement this. I would like to be able to include the livestream details in the categories.xml file (specialCategory???). Is this something that would have to coded from scratch or are there any examples/templates out there for doing this?

[joetesta]

I don't know of any examples like this, but if you start with the categoryFeed.brs from the videoplayer example, you could use the specialCategory or you could hard-code / hack it as I did, so we don't need to put this in the XML (since our same XML is used elsewhere without this custom "Search" category) I believe you'd have to add the video's meta data to the category feed "o" object in your case here,

            ' Insert custom search button after category titled 'Favorite'
            if(o.Title) = "Favorite" then
              ' Create the Search button
              o = init_category_item()
              o.Type = "normal"
              o.Title = "Title Search"
              o.Description = "Search by title"
              o.ShortDescriptionLine1 = "Search Titles"
              o.ShortDescriptionLine2 = "Search by Title"
              o.SDPosterURL = "http://myURL.com/titles.png"
              o.HDPosterURL = "http://myURL.com/titles.png"
              o.Feed = ""
              ' add Title Search as the next button
              topNode.AddKid(o)

Or if you do use the specialCategory, you'd have to update the category parse routine to handle the video meta data, which to me seems like a mess at first thought.


Then in appHomeScreen under displayCategoryPosterScreen I have something like:

  if category.Title = "Title Search" then
    'print "Display Title Search screen now"
    showTitleSearchScreen()
    return 0

Then there is a function showTitleSearchScreen that I needed to create, but using the meta data loaded above, you would play the video instead of calling showTitleSearchScreen under displayCategoryPosterScreen.

I hope this might be of some help!
-Joe