Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's

mitu

@papinist @tanstaafl is the real help here. I'm just browsing.

ganondork

Hey thanks for the script, really appreciate it. I added some stuff, that I‘d also liked to flush for a clean start, Wifi-credentials for example. And I also added a chmod 777 for the gamelist folder afterwards, because the rebuild xmls lacked writing permission.

Still i couldn‘t accomplish to also remove my favorites by adding „-e favorites“ to the grep line. All xmls that had favorites get screwed up, I can‘t see any metadata for the systems games afterwards.

I‘m on my way to work now, so I can‘t provide you with any more information. But perhaps someone has already dealt with this issue?

I‘d also like to remove all registered bluetooth devices with this script. To have just my roms and gamelists left to carry over to another setup. But I couldn‘t find a config file to edit or remove. Ideas?

Riverstorm

Thanks for the script. I would add a +1 as a feature. After setup and testing I have the first game in each emulator in my list which would be nice to flush before imaging.

kactius

Very thanks.
I contribute with a grain of sand, in Spanish, but it is easy to edit, it is a menu with dialog to clean lastplayed and playcount, 3 options:
1 "home/pi/RetroPie/roms"
2 "opt/retropie/configs"
3 "both 1 and 2"
4 "Exit" 2>"${INPUT}"
The code, copy paste and give execution permission:
https://pastebin.com/tGPMehXr

davidgrohl

Hi all,
I've tried this usefull script but it doesn't work for me.
I put it in /home/pi/Retropie/roms folder. Make it executable. Than launch it typing ./name_of_The_script.sh and it says:

file: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms//gamelist.xml'
./clear_played.sh: 7: ./clear_played.sh: cannot create /home/pi/RetroPie/roms//gamelist.xml.tmp : Directory nonexistent
mv: cannont stat '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/**/gamelist.xml.tmp' : No such file or directory

What's the mistake?

mitu

@davidgrohl The script fragment expects the gamelist.xml located in the ROMs folders, but by default they're in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system_name>. Try the script posted by @kactius, it allows you to select one of the 2 locations for the gamelist.xml files.

davidgrohl

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@davidgrohl The script fragment expects the gamelist.xml located in the ROMs folders, but by default they're in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system_name>. Try the script posted by @kactius, it allows you to select one of the 2 locations for the gamelist.xml files.

Thanks @mitu for reply. That scripts works with option 2.
Great! Thanks a lot.

Invisible89

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@davidgrohl The script fragment expects the gamelist.xml located in the ROMs folders, but by default they're in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system_name>. Try the script posted by @kactius, it allows you to select one of the 2 locations for the gamelist.xml files.

Hi guys.

I'm trying to clear my last played games list, but it doesn't work :(

I've created cleanlastplayed.sh file with this code:

#!/bin/sh
#clear_played.sh

for f in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/**/gamelist.xml
do
echo "file: $f"
grep -e lastplayed -e playcount -v $f > "$f.tmp"
mv -f "$f.tmp" $f
done

It's ok? Or I've to modify it with the name of the system name (**)?

And where should I put this file? What directory?

Thanks

mitu

You should use a single wildcard (*) instead of the system name, but the script will only find the gamelist.xml files from the ROM folders, you might have some gamelist files in ~/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system> folders.

Invisible89

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

You should use a single wildcard (*) instead of the system name, but the script will only find the gamelist.xml files from the ROM folders, you might have some gamelist files in ~/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system> folders.

Ok, i will try with only one windcard.

But where i've to put my cleanlastplayed.sh file?

mitu

@Invisible89 said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

But where i've to put my cleanlastplayed.sh file?

It doesn't matter, as long as you execute it correctly. Let's say you save it in /home/pi/RetroPie/scripts.

#make the folder
mkdir -p $HOME/RetroPie/scripts

# create the file in $HOME/RetroPie/scripts/lastplayed.sh

# run the script
bash $HOME/$HOME/RetroPie/scripts/lastplayed.sh

Invisible89

@Invisible89 said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

You should use a single wildcard (*) instead of the system name, but the script will only find the gamelist.xml files from the ROM folders, you might have some gamelist files in ~/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system> folders.

Ok, i will try with only one windcard.

But where i've to put my cleanlastplayed.sh file?

Ok, i understand.

Thanks

Invisible89

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@Invisible89 said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

But where i've to put my cleanlastplayed.sh file?

It doesn't matter, as long as you execute it correctly. Let's say you save it in /home/pi/RetroPie/scripts.
#make the folder
mkdir -p $HOME/RetroPie/scripts

# create the file in $HOME/RetroPie/scripts/lastplayed.sh

# run the script
bash $HOME/$HOME/RetroPie/scripts/lastplayed.sh

Ok, now I've this when I try to run the script:

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie/scripts $ ./delete_pla_last.sh
-bash: ./delete_pla_last.sh: Permission denied

What I've to do to take a permission?

Thanks

mitu

@Invisible89 said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

What I've to do to take a permission?

It's because you've not made the script executable - that's why in my example command I've run it through bash. Just run

chmod +x delete_pla_last.sh

and re-run the script.

Invisible89

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@Invisible89 said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

What I've to do to take a permission?

It's because you've not made the script executable - that's why in my example command I've run it through bash. Just run
chmod +x delete_pla_last.sh
and re-run the script.

Finally! ;)

Done, thank you man!

RetrOkada

Hello, thanks for this script.

Unfortunately, when I attempt to run it, I receive the following message:
"
Clearlastplayed.sh, : 3:, clearlastplayed.sh, : syntax error: redirection unexpected
"

Anyone know what this means?

Cheers.

RetrOkada

@RetrOkada Okay, so all sorted now. To run the script, I was entering sh "clearlastplayed.sh". I tried ./clearlastplayed.sh instead, and it worked perfectly.

I also removed the DOS line breaks from the script, so circumvented the "Bad Interpreter" issue.

ssokolow

Sorry for replying half a year later, but this is showing up in Google results and using grep to edit an XML file risks corrupting it if something else broke the assumption that it's pretty-printed in the right way.

(eg. Python's ElementTree XML library outputs minified XML by default and it took a few revisions to turn on pretty-printing in one of the scripts I wrote.)

The device I'm currently preparing for a family Christmas gift is using Batocera rather than RetroPie, but my solution for this should work on RetroPie too as long as it's got a standard Python 3.x installation.

https://gist.github.com/ssokolow/e1c4b6fceb65bcf4e6d886ce691280bf

(As you can probably tell, I got a little nerd-sniped about making it robust and friendly before I realized I was going way overboard for a self-itch-scratch and stopped short of writing an automated test suite.)

To just clear lastplayed and playcount without also clearing gametime, pass --remove-tag lastplayed --remove-tag playcount as arguments.

Lolonois

@ssokolow Nice work. Works like charm on a RetroPie setup too. Thanks for sharing it under MIT license.