UK TV Listings in Excel

This article describes a simple way of getting TV programme listings from the Internet and into Excel using VBA.

For this I'm going to use the XMLTV feed provided by the Radio Times. This feed is usable only for personal and non-commercial use and is copyrighted. It is useful for analysing the TV guide though.

Method

The first thing to do is create a new module to hold the code. Let's call this TVGuide. To hold all the data we need to create a new workbook and worksheet. Then we can set up an external data query from a web page to get the channel data. I used the macro recorder to do this part which is why it's a bit verbose. I'm not sure how much of the code I need but it doesn't do any harm leaving it there.

Sub GetChannels()
'
' Get Channels from Radio Times
'

    Dim wb As Workbook
    Dim wk As Worksheet
    
    Set wb = Application.Workbooks.Add
    Set wk = ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets.Add
    wk.Name = "Channels"
    
    With ActiveSheet.QueryTables.Add(Connection:="URL;http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/channels.dat", Destination:=Range("$A$1"))
        .Name = "channels"
        .FieldNames = True
        .RowNumbers = False
        .FillAdjacentFormulas = False
        .PreserveFormatting = True
        .RefreshOnFileOpen = False
        .BackgroundQuery = True
        .RefreshStyle = xlInsertDeleteCells
        .SavePassword = False
        .SaveData = True
        .AdjustColumnWidth = True
        .RefreshPeriod = 0
        .WebSelectionType = xlEntirePage
        .WebFormatting = xlWebFormattingNone
        .WebPreFormattedTextToColumns = True
        .WebConsecutiveDelimitersAsOne = True
        .WebSingleBlockTextImport = False
        .WebDisableDateRecognition = False
        .WebDisableRedirections = False
        .Refresh BackgroundQuery:=False
    End With
    
End Sub
     

You'll note that the address of the feed is http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/channels.dat. This page contains a list of the channel numbers with their descriptions separated by a pipe character. So the next job is to separate these into two columns.

'Split data by pipe
Columns("A:A").Select
Selection.TextToColumns Destination:=Range("A1"), DataType:=xlDelimited, _
    TextQualifier:=xlDoubleQuote, ConsecutiveDelimiter:=False, Tab:=False, _
    Semicolon:=False, Comma:=False, Space:=False, Other:=True, OtherChar _
    :="|", FieldInfo:=Array(Array(1, 1), Array(2, 1)), TrailingMinusNumbers:=True

'Delete row 2
Rows("2:2").Select
Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp

'Label columns
Range("A1").FormulaR1C1 = "Channel Number"
Range("B1").FormulaR1C1 = "Channel"

'Change widths of columns
Columns("A:A").EntireColumn.AutoFit
Columns("B:B").EntireColumn.AutoFit

'Sort data
wk.Sort.SortFields.Clear
wk.Sort.SortFields.Add Key:=Range("B:B"), SortOn:=xlSortOnValues, Order:=xlAscending, DataOption:=xlSortNormal
With wk.Sort
    .SetRange Range("A1").CurrentRegion
    .Header = xlYes
    .MatchCase = False
    .Orientation = xlTopToBottom
    .SortMethod = xlPinYin
    .Apply
End With
     

The above code needs to be inserted before the End Sub of the previous code example. I've also labelled the columns, deleted a row, changed the widths of the columns and sorted the data by channel description. This makes it easier to find the channel you're interested in.

So, that's nice. You have a list of channels sorted by their description. It's not very useful though. Fortunately, it's also easy to get the actual TV guide data for each channel. The address is almost exactly the same as before but instead of channel.dat at the end of the address we have {channel number}.dat where {channel number} is the number from the previous list.

Now all we need is some way to use the first list to get the actual time data. The easiest way (well, I thought it was easy) is to create a class module and enable events on the workbook that you've created.

So let's create that new class module and call it ChannelSelector. We want to allow events within the workbook we've created. Therefore we need to create a variable for the workbook in question and use the WithEvents keyword. We also need to attach this newly defined variable to the workbook that was created earlier.

Option Explicit
Private WithEvents App As Workbook

Private Sub Class_Initialize()
    Set App = ActiveWorkbook
End Sub
     

The above five lines are almost all that's needed to do this. We also need to create a variable within the TVGuide module for this class i.e. instantiate an object of this class. So:

Option Explicit
Public ChannelHandler As ChannelSelector
     

defines the variable in the module. We then 'set' this variable to the class defined above. This is done at the end of the GetChannels() subroutine.

'Set events for channel numbers
Set ChannelHandler = New ChannelSelector
     

Now that we've allowed user-defined events for this workbook, we need to create a subroutine to handle them. In this case we want to handle the double click event when the user double clicks on the channel number. Therefore we use the SheetBeforeDoubleClick event. Below is the code for the event handler.

Private Sub App_SheetBeforeDoubleClick(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range, Cancel As Boolean)
    Dim channel As String
    Dim wk As Worksheet
    
    'Cancel event
    Cancel = True
    
    channel = Target.Text
    
    Set wk = ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets.Add
    wk.Name = channel
    With ActiveSheet.QueryTables.Add(Connection:="URL;http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/" & channel & ".dat", Destination:=Range("$A$1"))
        .Name = "chan"
        .FieldNames = True
        .RowNumbers = False
        .FillAdjacentFormulas = False
        .PreserveFormatting = True
        .RefreshOnFileOpen = False
        .BackgroundQuery = True
        .RefreshStyle = xlInsertDeleteCells
        .SavePassword = False
        .SaveData = True
        .AdjustColumnWidth = True
        .RefreshPeriod = 0
        .WebSelectionType = xlEntirePage
        .WebFormatting = xlWebFormattingNone
        .WebPreFormattedTextToColumns = True
        .WebConsecutiveDelimitersAsOne = True
        .WebSingleBlockTextImport = False
        .WebDisableDateRecognition = False
        .WebDisableRedirections = False
        .Refresh BackgroundQuery:=False
    End With
    
    'Split data by tilde
    Columns("A:A").Select
    Selection.TextToColumns Destination:=Range("A1"), DataType:=xlDelimited, _
        TextQualifier:=xlDoubleQuote, ConsecutiveDelimiter:=False, Tab:=False, _
        Semicolon:=False, Comma:=False, Space:=False, Other:=True, OtherChar _
        :="~", FieldInfo:=Array(Array(1, 1), Array(2, 1)), TrailingMinusNumbers:=True
        
End Sub
     

This uses almost exactly the same code as before to extract data from the XMLTV feed. This time however the data needs to be split by the tilde (~) character.

Conclusion

And there you have it, the times for the next two weeks for all the programs for the channel that you just double clicked.

Obviously this is just a simple example and there is no error checking whatsoever. If you double click on something other than a relevant channel number then the program will fail with a runtime error.

There's a lot that can be done to expand on this and produce a nice TV Guide. I just wanted to give a simple introduction though.