kodi: play single item from TV show

[philips]

My HomeAssistant NFC Chromecast project has one feature that I don't know how to do with Zaparoo: play one episode at random of a TV show. The use case is letting my kids "watch TV" but I don't want them having the analysis paralysis of choosing an episode- more of a Saturday morning cartoon experience. I also want them to have to get up and tap again if they want to watch another episode.

Anyways, reading up on the Zaparoo architecture and I think this would require two design thoughts:

Tag Design

I read up on the tag design a bit and feel something similar to the tags could be used.

So, for example we could reserve a prefix like zaparoo- for zaparoo internal things and create something like:

kodi-show://1/Purpley?zaparoo-randomize-list=1&zaparoo-list-length=1

This would randomize the list. And then play a single show.

It might be too general purpose and abstract so could be like:

kodi-show://1/Purpley?zaparoo-single-random=1

What do you think of this?

Patch Design

I think the other thing to figure out here is how to integrate with the Zaparoo architecture. I think, essentially, I would patch around this line to randomize the list and select a single episode. But, maybe there is a higher level place to support this sort of behavior?

https://github.com/ZaparooProject/zaparoo-core/blob/main/pkg/platforms/shared/kodi/client.go#L416

Thanks for the input on this!

[wizzomafizzo]

I would really love to support this as well. I'm just having a think about the architecture here. I do think your idea for adding special args temporarily is good, but I'd like to set it up so we can expand it later into full playlist syncing support between Zaparoo and Kodi

[philips]

@wizzomafizzo no rush on this. I would rather the design be something you are happy with rather than a hack. Let me know if I can help at all. My current setup is working so no urgency on my end.

[philips]

@wizzomafizzo Apparently this works: **launch.random:TVEpisode/Purpley -*! I am satisfied!

[wizzomafizzo]

lol... I never for a second considered that, that's very clever. Well I think I'd like to keep this open until there's a way better integrated with Kodi but I'm glad that will be enough to get you by

[philips]

@wizzomafizzo Yeah, it is a bit hacky since you are relying on prefix matching and Jellyfin/Kodis naming conventions instead of selecting from a list that exists as an object.

A more fleshed out proposal would let you do things like select a random track from a music album.