[spiff]

yeh, that list is a bit outdated.

yes, use of NaturalCasing is encouraged - elupus gets a twitchy eye otherwise
member variables is often of the form m_camelCase though, those seems to pass

[RockerC]

Suggest that you consider using this as a unified framework and API for both music and videos in the future, so for now just keep movies and tv shows in mind a little bit, as it would be good the implementation could be extended for that too later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8YmxsHNWQ

What we want in general is to allow addons to populate the library, i.e. allow multiple library backends. This for video and for music.

You guys might want to check out the new IceLibrary addon which enables the user to add stream links for movies from Icefilms.info into the XBMC video library.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=109572

That is, I think that you should look at the overall concept of this addon, more than the method used by it at the code level, as the result it achieves is probably the experince that the end users want, no matter what the source is.

The plugin was inspired by
Icefilms.info addon, created by anarchintosh
XBMC.Library supplemental tool, created by bradvido88

As you can read it that thread it uses a patch hack that allows for an addon to add strm files to the movies library.
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8730

So the idea behind this addon, as well as with the XBMC.MyLibrary supplemental tool that was the inspiration for it, is that they let you add individual content from any source, such as UPnP or audio and video plugins for online internet services to XBMC's native video library for a totally integrated experince.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=98210
http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-mylibrary/

So, this program acts as an integration layer between your video source and xbmc's video database like so:
[Video source (plugin/upnp/etc)] <<--->>[XBMC.MyLibrary] <<--->>[XBMC Video Library]

The XBMC.MyLibrary tool also enables the user to download streaming content, so to save local cached copies of the videos, similar to Spotify's offline mode for when you do not have high enough bandwith to stream the content directly of the internet.

[da-anda]

anybody had a look at the concept MediaPortal2 has for it's plugable content providers/backends? Just for an inspiration...

[Moinois]

I know this is an old(ish) thread, but since akezeke is pointing at it from the readme at https://github.com/akezeke/spotyxbmc2 I presume that it is still valid.

Is there any news on this topic? I think that the discussion is sound and interesting and defining a solid plugin API is definitely a good start.

[themarty]

I too am very curious. It would be nice if someone posted an update in this thread.

[Jules]

+1

[Jako]

The database backend that garbear made for the new photo library is abstracted so that it can be adapted to other libraries, maybe it could be used as a framework for this idea?

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=141169

The code is https://github.com/garbear/xbmc/commits/photolibrary . For those interested, the database backend is a new abstraction I wrote (I call it a denormalized database with dynamic normalization). Once I put it in place, I decided to upgrade the layout by adding tags, keywords and categories; the code to add the many-to-many tables and link tables, upgrade old schema to the new version, and while upgrading pre-populate the six new tables with data that was already in the database, and then modify the GUI to be able to browse by these new fields, was just over 20 lines of code. IOW, adapting to other libraries (looking at you, games!) should be a relatively painless task.

Use that code base combined with the work that akezeke has done with spotyxbmc2, as a first proof-of-concept addon for it, and you might have a match made in heaven?

[NewMedia]

What is the current status of this?

[HeresJohnny]

Just my 10 cents: XBMC is a free open source software and should not integrate with paid services. It would make much more sense IMHO to integrate with Google music as a storage service.

[nooryani84]

Paid vs free is not really the concern here in my opinion, more if its open or closed source. I believe Google Music is closed source just like Spotify. In the spirit of what XBMC stands for, I don't think these kind of plugins should be in any main repo, though I would very much like to use them myself.

Just like Wikipedia has remained ad-free and open, so should XBMC

[da-anda]

I don't see why GoogleMusic, Spotify or Netflix addons shouldn't be in our repo once we have better support for binary addons. They probably won't be opensource, yes, but if they would be hidden in some third party repo >70% of the userbase that would like to use those would never find them. So it's "ease of use/usability" vs "OpenSource ftw". Personally I'm for ease of use as long as those are optional and there are no other major concerns (legal things or alike). That's just my personal opinion.

[nooryani84]

Hmm.. well as long as its ok with the owner I suppose it's fine. Better to have the option than not at all.

Edit: I didn't mean to go all Richard Stallman - that guy's nuts.

[Hedda]

Paid vs free is not really the concern here in my opinion, more if its open or closed source. I believe Google Music is closed source just like Spotify. In the spirit of what XBMC stands for, I don't think these kind of plugins should be in any main repo, though I would very much like to use them myself.

Example of existing binary addons for closed sources already in use in XBMC see the PVR client addons for WMC, DVBLink, DVBViewer, and For The Record / Argus TV Server

http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=167

Those are not open source applications but they all have a open API, sometimes also referred to as a public API, and therefor XBMC can have a client addon for them

http://searchcloudapplications.techtarge...n/open-API

You could also see it as watching paid broadcast TV from cable or satellite via your open source set-top box, and while the signal source is closed / encrypted you can still legally enjoy it on your open source client if you pay for the decryption.

[da-anda]

it's not about closed source services but addons using/shipping closed source libs to interact with those. For these cases a decision has to be made. So libspotify might not be wanted in repo but rather one of the reverse engineered and opensource ones.

[RockerC]

Bumping this as the discussion came up again here: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=221598

For Kodi v15 under important changes, this is stated:
* Start of integration binary add-ons and changing the build system around it

Is this potentially the beginning of closed source addons?

Closed source add-ons have been possible for a while now. However, all add-ons from the kodi.tv add-on repos will always, as a fundamental requirement, be open source.

Does that mean that the team would still not allow an addon that itself is fully open source but relies a closed source library to connect to a propitiatory online API?

As a specific example I'm thinking how the (otherwise superb) SpotyXBMC project need to use the closed source libspotify to connect to the official Spotify API:

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=67012

Closed source binary library like libspotify takes care of all negotiation with backend (Spotify) services, including user authentication, digital rights management and decryption.

I mean if someone now took the time to port the SpotyXBMC project into a binary addon using the new build system, that binary addon would itself be fully open sourced licensed, but the addon won't actually be able to connect to the proprietary Spotify backend services online and stream media unless the addon also comes provided with (or can download) libspotify.

I think that akezeke have an absolutly brilliant concept of a unified music addon frontend, and a great proof-of-concept of it with SpotyXBMC2 from the end-user perspective, but what has previous been missing is for Kodi addons to support using closed source libraries like libspotify.

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=105147

What would need to be done solution-wise for the team to allow open source binary addons that uses closed source libraries like libspotify to be hosted in the official kodi.tv add-on repo?

Is there an available technical abstraction method that would make that both legal from a software license as well accepable from an free and open source software ethical point of view?

One suggested method would be for the addon itself download a library like libspotify and dynamically link it at runtime and then also read appkey at runtime as per these pull request?
https://github.com/akezeke/spotyxbmc2/pull/55
https://github.com/akezeke/spotyxbmc2/pull/53

What would it take to make the part about unified music addon frontend from akezeke's vision happen?

Is it really only the discussion about supporting closed source addons holding this whole concept back? If so then what about the suggestion of implementing this idea but not using Spotify as the reference addon and instead using a source with a free and open API just to get this project of the ground?

As akezeke point out, the end-users probably don't care where the music comes from, the user just wants to find the music he wants and play it. So it would be great to expand on the functionality that already exist in Kodi to also include music from online music addons, especially now that binary addons are a possibility.