[xbrob]

If you aren't familiar with it lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com/) is a massive resource of online training videos covering everything from Photoshop to SQL. Although a subscription is required to view complete courses it is well worth it in my experience.

It would be great to browse and watch the courses on a TV via XBMC while working along on a separate computer screen.

[w3__]

Great idea!

[xbrob]

Bump!

I keep thinking this must be fairly simple if you know what you are doing as the video files play on my XBMC.

[rwparris2]

No one without an account is going to make this...

[xbrob]

True, but for $25 a month you get access to everything and there are probably some plugin writers on here that would be interested in some of the content.

[xbrob]

I thought I'd try and have a go at this myself.

This is my first attempt with Python so really the stuff below is just a list of regular expressions to scrape the relevant parts from the site rather than working code. From following Voinage's tutorial (using his test.py) I have managed to work out the basic expressions needed to scrape the site.

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in helping me build this into a working plugin or giving me some help? Without authentication this will only scrape the free videos but I thought authentication could come later!

Code:

import urllib2,urllib,re

#Dropdown lists scraped from:
url='http://www.lynda.com/'

req = urllib2.Request(url)
req.add_header('User-Agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3')
response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
link=response.read()
response.close()

#SELECT BY SUBJECT
dropdown=re.compile('<select name=".+?" class="selectSubject">(.+?)</select>',re.DOTALL).findall(link)
subjectList=re.compile('<option value="(.+?)">(.+?)</option>').findall(dropdown[0])

#SELECT BY PRODUCT
dropdown=re.compile('<select name=".+?" class="selectProducts">(.+?)</select>',re.DOTALL).findall(link)
productList=re.compile('<option value="(.+?)">(.+?)</option>').findall(dropdown[0])

#SELECT BY VENDOR
dropdown=re.compile('<select name=".+?" class="selectVendor">(.+?)</select>',re.DOTALL).findall(link)
vendorList=re.compile('<option value="(.+?)">(.+?)</option>').findall(dropdown[0])

#SELECT BY AUTHOR
dropdown=re.compile('<select name=".+?" class="selectAuthor">(.+?)</select>',re.DOTALL).findall(link)
authorList=re.compile('<option value="(.+?)">(.+?)</option>').findall(dropdown[0])

#------
#LIST COURSES FOR CHOOSEN SUBJECT/PRODUCT/VENDOR etc
url='http://www.lynda.com/home/ViewCourses.aspx?lpk0='.productID/subjectID/vendorID

courseList=re.compile('<tr class=".+?"><td class="courseSpacer">&nbsp;</td><td class="coursesColumnTitle"><a cid=".+? href="(.+?)">(.+?)</a></td><td class="coursesColumnAlign" align="right" style="white-space:nowrap;"><span>(.+?)</span></td><td class="coursesColumnAlign" align="right" style="width:30px;">.+?</td><td class="coursesColumnAlign"><span>(.+?)</span></td></tr>').findall(link)

#------

#LIST VIDEOS WITHIN TUTORIAL
#url from courseList
videosList=re.compile('class="coursesColumnTitle" .+? href="(.+?)">(.+?)</a>').findall(link)

#FIND VIDEO FILE URL
#url from videosList
videoFile=re.compile('<param name="src" value="(.+?)" />').findall(link)

[xbrob]

Think I am getting somewhere now so please ignore the code above. Hopefully I'll be able to post a working plugin with authentication soon.

[rascaluk]

Did you ever get any further with this

Paul

[xbrob]

No, I didn't manage to get much further than loading a video and the Lynda site has changed a lot since. It would still be a very useful addon but its beyond my skills and spare time

There is an iPhone app now so perhaps it would be easier to pick up feeds intended for that if anyone wants to have a go?

[xbrob]

If anyone is interested in having a go I just had a quick look and the iPhone feeds probably would be helpful. For example:

http://www.lynda.com/WebServices/iPhone/...etKeywords
http://www.lynda.com/WebServices/iPhone/...ftwareList

[viellieb]

Could anyone please do this?

Using Airplay to mirror the videos from my iPad would be a nice workaround, but it doesn't seem to work :-(

[bashywash]

I would be willing to lend my account to any developer to work on this! thanks

* EDIT - Don't want to start a new thread but maybe this should be moved to Video Sub-Cat ?

[luger]

I'd also be willing to contribute dollars towards getting a developer an account if they'd want to work on this. Let me know!

[devel]

Hey, I know this is an old thread but I've developed a working lynda.com addon that can (rather naively) authenticate via an institution login (e.g. University) as this is the only login I have available to me. If anyone could lend me your/a regular lynda account so I can implement code for logging in regular users that'd be great. Alternatively I can walk you through how to capture the network requests on your computer when you log in and you could send these over to me.

Let me know if people still want this,
Thanks.

[kcodi]

Hi Devel,

I've been searching for this kind of plugin for quite a while.
Any chance you'd be willing to share it?
I'm using an institution login myself, so your plugin would be very helpful as-is.

Thanks in advance :-)