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At the moment setting up an external database for Kodi is still something that is set up via advancedsettings.xml, is it possible that this could now be done within the settings area of Kodi?
I realise that when it was first added HTPC's were expensive to buy, let alone have a separate server for Mysql and your media files to live on.
But nowadays we have Raspberry Pi's, Nvidia Sheilds for HTPC's, as well as a wealth of NAS Servers, not only that, a raspberry Pi, can at a pinch be a file server for a small household.
Also when the external database was added as a feature, there was no PVR backend either, as well as network TV cards.
Now it's commonplace for OTA broadcast around a flat/house, as well as users using more than one HTPC for throwing local media across their property, this I feel should be upgraded from an advanced setting to a 'standard setting' (although could still be 'hidden' as an expert setting within the Kodi GUI)
I feel, that if someone is willing to setup and scrape their local media, as well as setting up a PVR (TVHeadend for example) installing MySQL/PHPmyadmin etc shouldn't really be much of a huge step.
Although personally, when it comes to 'factory resetting' my HTPC's, we are really only talking about copying one more file across!
These are my feelings on why it should be, as well as knowing roughly why it is in advanced settings, is there any reason now it can't be?
If so, what are they?
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There used to be an addon floating around in the past (Google 'kodi advanced settings addon') that provided a GUI in Modi to create and edit the advancedsettings.xml.
But, something like that would only help for the Kodi clients, the mySQL server would still need to be created and setup on the relevant platform. However I guess an addon could possibly be created to do that too?
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Personally, I don't see the problem with leaving it in advancedsettings.xml . If you are competent enough to set up some sort of file-sharing and an SQL server to go with it, editing advancedsettings.xml to get it to work should be pretty trivial. Whilst I can sort of see an argument for making it 'more mainstream', I can also see that it could potentially open a much bigger 'can of worms' - giving people more settings to fiddle with will undoubtedly make them do just that. Leaving things as they are means only people looking for this sort of thing will find it and even then, as Darren says, people can still make mistakes but it will be a lot less than if you plonk a bunch of settings in front of everyone.
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2018-10-23, 13:05
(This post was last modified: 2018-10-23, 13:06 by tjay260476.)
OK, I wasn’t suggesting getting rid of advancedsetttings.xml, or adding mySQL into Kodi either, just adding the IP, username and password within the settings GUI.
I agree that advanced settings should stay as an xml file, also adding an addon opens a whole can of worms too. MySQL should always be outside of Kodi, whether that’s via docker, libreelec etc. Also if you are setting up MySQL it’s also not much of an ask to write a few lines in xml either.
TBH I personally don’t mind/care whether it’s in the GUI or in XML where I add those values, I just thought it might be time to be able to add these values within Kodi.
Edit: after re reading my OP I now see the confusion sorry!
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I totally agree with DarrenHil and such setup does not belong in the GUI cause it will just cause confusions and get more question that we want.
If you can setup a mysql database you should be able to create a simple advancedsettings.xml file.
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I'll throw out another reason NOT to put this configuration in the GUI: a database server like MySQL is just not ideal for Kodi. They are designed for larger data sets, workloads and interfaces where milliseconds don't matter as much as in Kodi, and more complex software environments.
Specifically, performance is not consistent - uncached queries to MySQL are notably slower than SQLite, cached queries are notably faster, and the cache flushes out queries inconsistently with library navigation so it's a tossup when browsing around the libraries. External servers are also much more difficult to set up, and as a completely different application they introduce a whole new class of concerns and more places for things to go wrong.
Ideally each Kodi installation would keep all data in a local SQLite database and there would be a way for them to share new information (like JSON-RPC, which has the majority of necessary bits already), but getting all of that set up is a lot more development work than swapping a SQLite DB with MySQL and writing portable queries. This is simply a quick-and-dirty solution that shouldn't be pushed up as a first-class feature.
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But what about it copying over paused, resumed and watched status over the various instances? Is that still doable in this situation? As they are all the reasons for MySQL at the moment.
Server: Ubuntu Server 22TB HDD running SAMBA
Kodi: 4 Raspberry Pi 3 running Libreelec - on the main PC - running Linux Mint
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