Unable to get/set video position in Kodi database

[dagwieers]

Describe the feature

Since the VOD provider (VRT NU) stores the position of a stream and watch-status in its infrastructure (among other things) and we would like to integrate with this so users can continue watching from Kodi, or from their smartphone, or web-browser, we have the need to update a stream's position in the Kodi database.

We currently set the position and watch-status while generating the listing in Kodi, however this has the nasty downside that we have to controle when the listing is regenerated (i.e. after a stream has been played, or played partly). This does not give a good user experience.

The other downside currently is that the context-menu items Reset resume position and Mark as watched/unwatched do not work as we cannot intercept this event to update the position online.

The obvious solution is to use Files.GetFileDetails and Files.SetFileDetails JSON-RPC calls to synchronize resumeposition and playcount information, however these calls are not supported for 'plugin://'-type resources so they are not useful for add-on developers. xbmc/xbmc#15897

The proposed fix is simple but got rejected: xbmc/xbmc#16087

As a result the current implementation of resumepoints works but with various quirks and issues.

[michaelarnauts]

Another approach is to directly access the database, but this will get rejected for the official repo. If I remember correctly, PlexKodiConnect is doing this.

[dagwieers]

I opened a feature request upstream at https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=350726

[dagwieers]

@CastagnaIT laid out a callback mechanism that can do this. We will need to document the implementation in the add-ons/best-practices wiki. So there is hope !