WatchState

This tool primary goal is to sync your backends play state without relying on third party services, out of the box, this tool support Jellyfin, Plex and Emby media servers.

Features

• Sync backends play state (from many to many).
• Backup your backends play state into portable format.
• Receive Webhook events from media backends.
• Find un-matched or mis-matched items.
• Search your backend for title or item id.
• Display and filter your play state. Can be exported as yaml or json.

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Breaking change in plex webhook handling.

If you happen to have enabled plex webhooks and had limit webhook requests to the selected user, plex in recent versions managed to fix bug in old versions where they report the admin account user id as 1 regardless of whether you have single or multi-user setup. We have a fix in place (2023-08-28) to update the user id to the actual user id from plex.tv. However, Sadly this step is manual you have to rerun the config:manage command and re-select your user to update the value. To fix this please run the command

$ docker exec -ti watchstate config:manage [BACKEND_NAME]

And select your actual user which you want to process the webhooks events from. once that fixed you won't be missing events from webhooks.

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Install

create your docker-compose.yaml with the following content:

version: '2.3'
services:
    watchstate:
        image: ghcr.io/arabcoders/watchstate:latest
        # To change the user/group id associated with the tool change the following line.
        user: "${UID:-1000}:${GID:-1000}"
        container_name: watchstate
        restart: unless-stopped
        # For information about supported environment variables visit FAQ page.
        # works for both global and container specific environment variables. 
        environment:
            - WS_TZ=UTC # Set timezone.
        ports:
            - "8080:8080" # webhook listener port.
        volumes:
            - ./data:/config:rw # mount current directory to container /config directory.

Create directory called data next to the docker-compose.yaml file.

After creating your docker compose file, start the container.

$ mkdir -p ./data && docker-compose pull && docker-compose up

Note: It's really important to match the user: to the owner of the data directory, the container is rootless, as such it will crash if it's unable to write to the data directory. It's really not recommended to run containers as root, but if you fail to run the container you can try setting the user: "0:0" if that works it means you have permissions issues. refer to FAQ to troubleshoot the problem.

Note: For Unraid users You can install the Community Applications plugin, and search for watchstate it comes preconfigured. Otherwise, to manually install it, you need to add value to the Extra Parameters section in advanced tab/view. add the following value --user 99:100. This has to happen before you start the container, otherwise it will have the old user id, and you then have to run the following command from terminal chown -R 99:100 /mnt/user/appdata/watchstate.

Note: To use this container with podman set docker-compose.yaml user to 0:0. it will appear to be working as root inside the container, but it will be mapped to the user in which the command was run under.

Adding backend

After starting the container you should start adding your backends and to do so run the following command:

Note: to get your plex token, please visit this plex page to know how to extract your plex token. For jellyfin & emby. Go to Dashboard > Advanced > API keys > then create new api keys.

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:add [BACKEND_NAME]

This command is interactive and will ask you for some questions to add your backend.

Managing backend

To edit backend settings run

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:manage [BACKEND_NAME]

Importing play state.

What does Import or what does the command state:import means in context of watchstate?

Import means, pulling data from the backends into the database while attempting to normalize the state.

To import your current play state from backends that have import enabled, run the following command:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console state:import -v

This command will pull your play state from all your backends. To import from specific backends use the [-s, --select-backends] flag which accept comma seperated list of backend names. For example,

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console state:import -v --select-backends 'home_plex,home_jellyfin' 

Now that you have imported your current play state enable the import task by adding the following environment variables to your docker-compose.yaml file WS_CRON_IMPORT=1. By default, we have it disabled. for more environment variables please refer to Environment variables list.

Supported import methods

• Scheduled Task.
• On demand.
• Webhooks.

Note: Even if all your backends support webhooks, you should keep import task enabled. This help keep healthy relationship. and pick up any missed events.

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Exporting play state

What does export or what does the command state:export means in context of watchstate?

Export means, sending data back to backends, while trying to minimize the network traffic.

To export your current play state to backends that have export enabled, run the following command

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console state:export -v

This command will export your current play state to all of your export enabled backends. To export to specific backends use the [-s, --select-backends] flag which accept comma seperated list of backend names. For example,

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console state:export -v --select-backends 'home_plex,home_jellyfin' 

Now that you have exported your current play state, enable the export task by adding the following environment variables to your docker-compose.yaml file WS_CRON_EXPORT=1. By default, we have it disabled. for more environment variables please refer to Environment variables list.

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FAQ

Take look at this frequently asked questions page. to know more about this tool and how to enable webhook support and answers to many questions.

Social contact

If you have short or quick questions, you are free to join my discord server and ask the question. keep in mind it's solo project, as such it might take me a bit of time to reply.