Under the category "because with RSS I now can..." I added a Netflix DVD Queue mod to my blog. You'll
find it here. Creating this CS mod was an opportunity for me to use Scott Mitchell's excellent
SkmRSS library. There are additional bits on SkmRSS on
a recent post here. The mod is also made possible because Netflix provides several
RSS feeds of not only your queue, but to what you've got at home (which may be fun yet to add to this mod), along with recommendations, top 100 most popular rentals, and so on.
Steps in the CS mod were the usual: Add a netflix.aspx page which loads a view, which loads the skins containing the controls, write the codebehind classes in the csblogs project. Then update the SiteUrls.config, BlogUrls.cs and resources.xml. In this case, however, we're
binding a RssFeed object to a SkmRSS control and not to a simple asp:repeater in the NetflixList.ascx, so base binding gets tricky, given the deply inherited nature of CS. To resolve the problem of SkmRSS binding to a null (the [cached] feed hasn't been retrieved yet), I added some hackery to the CS\Controls\TempletedWebControls.cs base class:
public override void DataBind() {
this.EnsureChildControls();
if (this.GetType().Name != "NetflixList")
{
base.DataBind ();
}
}I've put together a zip with codebits, the skins, controls, and codebehind if anyone else feels the need to put their Netflix Queue online, as well. Let me know if you do so I can check it out!
Technorati Tags: Community Server, Netflix, .NET