Huflix

I am one of those people that don’t believe in paying $50 for cable. I think it is more because I am poor than cheap. Anyway, I have always loved streaming content from the internet to my tv. Netflix through my Xbox 360 is great and I couldn’t be any happier. I wasn’t much of a TV watcher, but after I became addicted to shows like Modern Family, The Middle, and Stargate Universe I started watching Hulu religiously. I love the fact that for $20 I can stream from Netflix and Hulu. Much better price tag than $50+ for cable or satellite. With both services, I have always wanted to perform a search on Netflix, and have it tell me if that TV show or Movie is on Hulu. The hard part is Hulu doesn’t have a public api for searching their video library. That is where Kynetx comes in!

I haven’t done a good job keeping up with the advancements in the KRL language, so when I sat down to make an application for the Developer Contest Saturday night, it was quite the project. Since Hulu doesn’t have a public api, the only thing I have to work with is the Hulu search page. Because of cross-domain security I couldn’t perform a simple ajax call within the jquery, so I used a datasource. A datasource is for json, not html, but it was a simple way to search Hulu without worrying about same origin policy. The search page was stored in a datasource, and all I had to do was make a javascript variable to put the datasource in so I could traverse the DOM with jquery.

Since searching Hulu doesn’t give specific information, like year released or anything there are some searches that don’t tell the whole truth. Each search result in Netflix is compared with each search result in Hulu. If there is a match, then it will insert the Hulu logo on the corresponding Netflix result. Hulu splits the season number and name of the show, whereas Netflix doesn’t, so any name with a colon “:” is shortened to contain only the text before the colon. So, Modern Family:Season 1 is compared as Modern Family.  A good example is to search for “All Dogs Go to Heaven” in Netflix with this Kynetx app. Since all the results contain “All Dogs Go to Heaven” the hulu logo is put on all of the Netflix results. However, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 is stream-able on Hulu. With the 2 at the end it is more unique, so it shows only one correct result on Netflix! (Try the app out searching for “Reba”, “30 Rock”, “Modern Family”. Those were some of what I used to test.)

Up to 3 Hulu results are shown per Netflix result. Hovering over the hulu logo will reveal the title of the matched video. Clicking on the hulu logo will take you directly to that hulu video, and it will start playing!

That is the nitty gritty of the program. I think the coolest thing is taking information from a source that doesn’t provide an api, and making a mashup possible! Talk about augmenting the web!

Download the Chrome Browser Extension

Download the Firefox Browser Extension

Give it a try and leave comments with suggestions and feedback. Don’t be too harsh though! I started working on this app late Saturday (Dec 4) and finished it early morning Sunday. (Less than 24 hrs.) Be sure to visit the Kynetx Development Center to find out how to create your own app!