Nitro and iBL changes July 2016 Preparing for September

A number of changes to both Nitro and iBL APIs this month.

In Nitro land, clips gained a caption element, of type string.

Two mixins moved from unstable to stable, and release_status supported, they are available_webcasts and available_simulcasts.

In the iBL API, programmes gained a new boolean attribute requires_tv_licence, though this was originally spelt license in the ibl.json schema file. This is no-doubt in preparation for September’s law change requiring all users of the TV iPlayer to have a TV licence. This is interesting as it indicates this requirement will not apply to some content. How the requirement to have a valid TV licence is to be enforced is something we will just have to wait to find out.

A bit of digital archaeology turned up an old but interesting partial definition of the iBL API which helped fill in a couple of missing endpoints, parameter descriptions etc. This file would have been an excellent kick start to generating the Swagger specification, but might also have limited my exploration of the available endpoints.

A question on StackExchange’s code-review site from a user of the iBL API.

After much searching, I also located a list of Denton Guidance Codes, these cover such things as warnings for sexual and violent content. These are used by the BBC Nitro and iBL APIs, and also the ITV Mercury API. More news on an openItv project to cover this API as it happens.