thromer/kodi-addon-state-example

A test repository for managing state in a kodi plugin

Test Kodi Plugin for Managing Addon State

This is a simple repo for my testing of Kodi plugin state. This plugin is designed to investigate different methods of managing addon state while performing various actions such as searching within Kodi.

Getting Started

Follow these steps to get the addon up and running:

1. Run build.py in the root directory of the project. This will create a zip file named plugin.video.addonstatetest.zip in the dist directory.
2. Copy the generated zip file to a location accessible by your Kodi installation.
3. In Kodi, go to Settings, then Addons. Choose "Install from zip file" and navigate to the location of the copied zip file.

Using the Deploy Script

The deploy.py script is a tool for Windows developers to streamline the testing process. It copies the necessary files from your project to the Kodi addons directory (%AppData%\Kodi\addons\plugin.video.addonstatetest).

Please ensure that the addon has been installed at least once using the build script before using the deploy script. This script is intended for development and testing, not for distributing the plugin to end users.

Purpose of This Repository

The main purpose of this repository is to standardize the approach to managing state in Kodi plugins. Kodi plugins have unique requirements due to the nature of their lifecycle and the way they handle user interactions.

Unique Requirements of Kodi Plugins

Kodi plugins are ephemeral in nature. The lifetime of the application only exists for a short time to generate a list of directories. Each time a link is clicked, everything in the application is re-instantiated. This presents a unique challenge in managing the state of the application.

Managing State in Kodi Plugins

All parameters for the program must be encoded into a URL and parsed as the program recursively calls itself. We are essentially clicking a series of links like ‘plugin://plugin.video.addon/?param1=value1&param2=value2’. The program should be designed to handle going backwards through these states as well as recursively deeper.

This repository aims to explore and standardize the best practices for managing such state transitions in Kodi plugins. By doing so, it will provide a solid foundation for building robust and reliable Kodi plugins.

With the recent update thanks to doko-desuka this addon now handles search state in a nice way and retains history.

This is down to using xbmc.executebuiltin('Container.Update(%s)' % url) which updates the listing when using a search query. As we discovered you must assure menu items have isFolder=False so that Kodi considers it an action. That prevent re-triggering things like keyboard input etc.

Contributing

Contributions to this project are always welcome. If you have a new approach to managing application state or an improvement to an existing method, feel free to create a new branch and submit a pull request.

Contact

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please open an issue in this repository. I appreciate your feedback and am always looking to improve.

Thank you for visiting this repository!