2012-03-31, 08:54
okay, thanks pecinko...
Based on the wiki page on how to sync multiple libraries, I could think of some possible possible issues and their solutions.
One problem that is obvious is that it's not going to be easy for someone with less technical know-how to be able to do this. One way to go about this is give user an option to create the current installation of XBMC as a server for hosting shared userdata. On this installation MySQL can be installed. Other XBMC installations can add this server for syncing userdata and accessing media on other devices. The idea is pretty similar to what is mentioned in this rather old ticket (if anyone has newer resources please point me towards them). The server will manage the media path translations (so that different devices can access each others media) and syncing userdata. This will eliminate the need for users to edit the 'advancedsettings.xml' file on each device. But one possible limitation with this method is that a message passing scheme will be needed to handle the communication between the server and all other installations (like the port number and protocol). This could be a problem if existing UPnP, JSON-RPC, HTTP and other sharing protocols are inappropriate for this.
The other solution can be to avoid the whole 'creation of central server' business and use XBMC's in-built UPnP server to interact with machines like NAS, the way jmarshall mentions in this post (or at least this my interpretation of what he meant...). So each XBMC installation can update the metadata information about the media files through UPnP, and when other clients sync themselves with NAS their view will be updated. But one limitation contained by this solution is that the media present only on the NAS will then be shared, right? I'm not sure about this, but if there is (or can be a way) to send the media files from device to NAS server (using XBMC's UPnP server), then may be we can handle this too...
These are a couple of design alternatives that I was thinking of. I might have gone wrong somewhere, feel free to correct me... Suggestions and feedback welcome too...
Based on the wiki page on how to sync multiple libraries, I could think of some possible possible issues and their solutions.
One problem that is obvious is that it's not going to be easy for someone with less technical know-how to be able to do this. One way to go about this is give user an option to create the current installation of XBMC as a server for hosting shared userdata. On this installation MySQL can be installed. Other XBMC installations can add this server for syncing userdata and accessing media on other devices. The idea is pretty similar to what is mentioned in this rather old ticket (if anyone has newer resources please point me towards them). The server will manage the media path translations (so that different devices can access each others media) and syncing userdata. This will eliminate the need for users to edit the 'advancedsettings.xml' file on each device. But one possible limitation with this method is that a message passing scheme will be needed to handle the communication between the server and all other installations (like the port number and protocol). This could be a problem if existing UPnP, JSON-RPC, HTTP and other sharing protocols are inappropriate for this.
The other solution can be to avoid the whole 'creation of central server' business and use XBMC's in-built UPnP server to interact with machines like NAS, the way jmarshall mentions in this post (or at least this my interpretation of what he meant...). So each XBMC installation can update the metadata information about the media files through UPnP, and when other clients sync themselves with NAS their view will be updated. But one limitation contained by this solution is that the media present only on the NAS will then be shared, right? I'm not sure about this, but if there is (or can be a way) to send the media files from device to NAS server (using XBMC's UPnP server), then may be we can handle this too...
These are a couple of design alternatives that I was thinking of. I might have gone wrong somewhere, feel free to correct me... Suggestions and feedback welcome too...