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I wanted to build a directory of symlinks that pointed to my MythTV recordings, so I wrote a little python script to do it for me. I figure someone else might find this useful too…

#!/usr/bin/python

# Copyright (C) Michael Still (mikal@stillhq.com) 2007
# Released under the terms of the GNU GPL

import MySQLdb
import os
import re

from socket import gethostname

# Connect to the MythTV database based on the MythTV config
config_values = {}
home = os.environ.get('HOME')
config = open(home + '/.mythtv/mysql.txt')
for line in config.readlines():
  if not line.startswith('#') and len(line) > 5:
    (key, value) = line.rstrip('\n').split('=')
    config_values[key] = value

db_connection = MySQLdb.connect(host = config_values['DBHostName'],
                                user = config_values['DBUserName'],
                                passwd = config_values['DBPassword'],
                                db = config_values['DBName'])
cursor = db_connection.cursor(MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor)

# Regexp for what is allowed in the symlink name
unsafe = re.compile('[^a-zA-Z0-9\-\:_]+')

# Find the recordings directory -- this assumes you haven't used an
# identifier string for this machine...
cursor.execute('select * from settings where value="RecordFilePrefix" and '
               'hostname="%s";' % gethostname())
row = cursor.fetchone()
basedir = row['data']

# Now find all the recordings we have at the moment
cursor.execute('select title, subtitle, starttime, basename from recorded;')

for i in range(cursor.rowcount):
  row = cursor.fetchone()

  title = row['title']
  subtitle = row['subtitle']
  if subtitle == '':
    subtitle = str(row['starttime'])

  title = title.replace(' ', '_')
  title = unsafe.sub('', title)

  subtitle = subtitle.replace(' ', '_')
  subtitle = unsafe.sub('', subtitle)

  extn = row['basename'].split('.')[1]

  try:
    os.mkdir(title)
  except:
    pass

  try:
    os.symlink('%s/%s' %(basedir, row['basename']),
               '%s/%s.%s' %(title, subtitle, extn))
  except:
    pass

This creates a tree of symlinks in the current directory that looks like this:

$ find . -type l
./Masterminds/Air_America
./Tech_Now/Getting_Famous
./Babar/To_Tell_or_Not_to_Tell
./Babar/The_Intruder
./Babar/Special_Delivery
./Babar/Conga_the_Terrible
./Babar/The_Celestville_Enquirer
./The_Backyardigans/Viking_Voyage
./The_Backyardigans/Cops_and_Robots
./The_Backyardigans/Eureka
./The_Backyardigans/Movers_of_Arabia
./The_Backyardigans/Save_the_Day
./Go_Diego_Go/Rainforest_Race
./Go_Diego_Go/Cool_Water_for_Ana_the_Anaconda
./Go_Diego_Go/Great_Jaguar_to_the_Rescue
./Go_Diego_Go/Diego_Saves_the_River_Dolphin
./Go_Diego_Go/Jorge_the_Little_Hawk_Learns_to_Migrate
./How_Its_Made/2007-06-08_09:30:00