watchstate/FAQ.md

FAQ

To see list of all the available commands run

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console list

This command will list all available commands, and each command has help document attached to it, simply run

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console help [COMMAND_NAME]

It will show you the relevant information regarding the command and some frequently asked question about that command. The help document attached to each command is more up to date and precise. So, please read it.

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Q: How to turn on scheduled tasks for import/export?

Scheduled tasks are configured via specific environment variables refers to environment variables section, to turn on the import/export tasks add the following environment variables:

• WS_CRON_IMPORT=1
• WS_CRON_EXPORT=1

By default, import is scheduled to run every 1hour while export is scheduled to run every 1hour 30minutes, you can alter the time when the tasks are run via adding the following variables with valid cron expression. good source to check your cron expression is crontab.guru.

• WS_CRON_IMPORT_AT="*/1 * * * *"
• WS_CRON_EXPORT_AT="30 */1 * * *"

to see the status of your scheduled tasks, simply run the following command:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console system:tasks

Note: All scheduled tasks are configured via the same variables style, refer to Tool specific environment variables for more information.

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Q: Container is crashing on startup?

This is likely due to misconfigured user: in docker-compose.yaml, the container is rootless as such it will crash if the tool unable to access the data path. to check permissions simply do the following

$ stat data/config/ | grep 'Uid:'

It should show something like

Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: ( 1000/  user)   Gid: ( 1000/  user)

Use the ids as parameters for user: in this case it should be user:"1000:1000".

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Q: Is there support for Multi-user setup?

No, The tool is designed to work for single user. However, It's possible to run container for each user. You can also use single container for all users, however it's not really easy refer to issue #136.

Note: for Plex home/managed users run the following command to extract each managed user access token.

$ docker exec -ti console backend:users:list --with-tokens -- [BACKEND_NAME]

For Jellyfin/Emby, you can just generate new API tokens. and associate them with users.

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Q: Does this tool require webhooks to work?

No, You can use the task scheduler or on demand sync "manually running import and export" if you want.

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Q: I get tired of writing the whole command everytime is there an easy way run the commands?

Since there is no way to access the command interface outside the container, you can create small shell script to at least omit part of command that you have to write for example, to create shortcut for docker command do the following:

$ echo 'docker exec -ti watchstate console "$@"' > ws
$ chmod +x ws

after that you can do ./ws command for example, ./ws db:list

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Q: I am using media backends hosted behind HTTPS, and see errors related to HTTP/2?

Sometimes there are problems related to HTTP/2, so before reporting bug please try running the following command:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:edit --key options.client.http_version --set 1.0 -- [BACKEND_NAME] 

This will force set the internal http client to use http v1 if it does not fix your problem, please open bug report about it.

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Q: Sync operations are failing due to request timeout?

If you want to increase the timeout for specific backend you can run the following command:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:edit --key options.client.timeout --set 600 -- [BACKEND_NAME] 

where 600 is the number of secs before the timeout handler will kill the request.

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Q: Which external db ids supported for Plex Media Server?

• tvdb://(id) New plex agent
• imdb://(id) New plex agent
• tmdb://(id) New plex agent
• com.plexapp.agents.imdb://(id)?lang=en (Legacy plex agent)
• com.plexapp.agents.tmdb://(id)?lang=en (Legacy plex agent)
• com.plexapp.agents.themoviedb://(id)?lang=en (Legacy plex agent)
• com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb://(seriesId)?lang=en (Legacy plex agent)
• com.plexapp.agents.xbmcnfo://(id)?lang=en (XBMC NFO Movies agent)
• com.plexapp.agents.xbmcnfotv://(id)?lang=en (XBMC NFO TV agent)
• com.plexapp.agents.hama://(db)\d?-(id)?lang=en (HAMA multi source db agent mainly for anime)

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Q: Which external db ids supported for Jellyfin and Emby?

• imdb://(id)
• tvdb://(id)
• tmdb://(id)
• tvmaze://(id)
• tvrage://(id)
• anidb://(id)

---

Environment Variables

There are many ways to load the environment variables, However the recommended methods are:

• Via docker-compose.yaml file.
• Via /config/config/.env file. This file normally does not exist you have to created manually.

to see list of loaded environment variables run:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console system:env

Tool specific environment variables.

These environment variables relates to the tool itself, you can load them via the recommended methods.

Key	Type	Description	Default
WS_DATA_PATH	string	Where to store main data. (config, db).	${BASE_PATH}/var
WS_TMP_DIR	string	Where to store temp data. (logs, cache)	${WS_DATA_PATH}
WS_TZ	string	Set timezone.	UTC
WS_CRON_{TASK}	bool	Enable {task} task. Value casted to bool.	false
WS_CRON_{TASK}_AT	string	When to run {task} task. Valid Cron Expression Expected.	*/1 * * * *
WS_CRON_{TASK}_ARGS	string	Flags to pass to the {task} command.	-v
WS_LOGS_CONTEXT	bool	Add context to console output messages.	false
WS_LOGGER_FILE_ENABLE	bool	Save logs to file.	true
WS_LOGGER_FILE_LEVEL	string	File Logger Level.	ERROR
WS_WEBHOOK_DUMP_REQUEST	bool	If enabled, will dump all received requests.	false
WS_EPISODES_DISABLE_GUID	bool	Disable external id parsing for episodes and rely on relative ids.	true
WS_TRUST_PROXY	bool	Trust WS_TRUST_HEADER ip. Value casted to bool.	false
WS_TRUST_HEADER	string	Which header contain user true IP.	X-Forwarded-For
WS_LIBRARY_SEGMENT	integer	Paginate backend library items request. Per request get total X number.	1000

Note: for environment variables that has {TASK} tag, you MUST replace it with one of IMPORT, EXPORT, PUSH, BACKUP, PRUNE, INDEXES, REQUESTS. To see tasks active settings run

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console system:tasks

Container specific environment variables.

These environment variables relates to the container itself, and it's recommended to load them via the docker-compose.yaml file.

Key	Type	Description	Default
WS_DISABLE_HTTP	integer	Disable included HTTP Server.	0
WS_DISABLE_CRON	integer	Disable included Task Scheduler.	0
WS_DISABLE_CACHE	integer	Disable included Cache Server.	0

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Q: How to add webhooks?

To add webhook for your backend the URL will be dependent on how you exposed webhook frontend, but typically it will be like this:

Directly to container: http://localhost:8080/?apikey=[WEBHOOK_TOKEN]

Via reverse proxy : https://watchstate.domain.example/?apikey=[WEBHOOK_TOKEN].

If your media backend support sending headers then remove query parameter ?apikey=[WEBHOOK_TOKEN], and add this header

X-apikey: [WEBHOOK_TOKEN]

where [WEBHOOK_TOKEN] Should match the backend webhook.token value. To see your webhook token for each backend run:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:view webhook.token

If you see 'Not configured, or invalid key.' or empty value. run the following command

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:edit --regenerate-webhook-token -- [BACKEND_NAME] 

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Emby (you need Emby Premiere to use webhooks).

Go to your Manage Emby Server > Server > Webhooks > (Click Add Webhook)

Webhook Url:

http://localhost:8080/?apikey=[WEBHOOK_TOKEN]

Webhook Events:

v4.7.9 or higher

• New Media Added
• Playback
• Mark played
• Mark unplayed

Versions prior to 4.7.9

• Playback events
• User events

Limit user events to:

• Select your user.

Limit library events to:

• Select libraries that you want to sync or leave it blank for all libraries.

Click Add Webhook

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Plex (You need Plex Pass to use webhooks)

Go to your Plex Web UI > Settings > Your Account > Webhooks > (Click ADD WEBHOOK)

URL:

http://localhost:8080/?apikey=[WEBHOOK_TOKEN]

Click Save Changes

Note: If you use multiple plex servers and use the same PlexPass account for all of them, you have to unify the API key, by running the following command:

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console config:unify plex 
Plex global webhook API key is: [random_string]

The reason is due to the way plex handle webhooks, And to know which webhook request belong to which backend we have to identify the backends, The unify command will do the necessary adjustments to handle multiple plex servers setup. for more information run.

$ docker exec -ti watchstate console help config:unify 

Note: If you share your plex server with other users, i,e. Home/managed users, you have to enable match user id, otherwise their play state will end up changing your play state. Plex will still send their events. But with match user id they will be ignored.

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Jellyfin (Free)

go to your jellyfin dashboard > plugins > Catalog > install: Notifications > Webhook, restart your jellyfin. After that go back again to dashboard > plugins > webhook. Add Add Generic Destination,

Webhook Name:

Watchstate-Webhook

Webhook Url:

http://localhost:8080

Notification Type:

• Item Added
• User Data Saved
• Playback Start
• Playback Stop

User Filter:

• Select your user.

Item Type:

• Movies
• Episodes

Send All Properties (ignores template)

Toggle this checkbox.

Add Request Header

Key: x-apikey

Value: [WEBHOOK_TOKEN]

Click save

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Q: What are the webhook limitations?

Those are some Webhook limitations we discovered for the following media backends.

Plex

• Plex does not send webhooks events for "marked as played/unplayed".
• Sometimes does not send events if you add more than one item at time.
• If you have multi-user setup, Plex will still report the admin account user id as 1.
• When you mark items as unwatched, Plex reset the date on the object.

Emby

• Emby does not send webhooks events for newly added items. See feature request implemented in 4.7.9.
• Emby webhook test event does not contain data. To test if your setup works, play something or do mark an item as played or unplayed you should see changes reflected in docker exec -ti watchstate console db:list.

Jellyfin

• If you don't select a user id, the plugin will send itemAdd event without user data, and will fail the check if you happen to enable webhook.match.user for jellyfin.
• Sometimes jellyfin will fire webhook itemAdd event without the item being matched.
• Even if you select user id, sometimes itemAdd event will fire without user data.
• Items might be marked as unplayed if Libraries > Display - Date added behavior for new content: is set to Use date scanned into library. This happens if the media file has been replaced.

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Q: Sometimes newly added episodes or movies don't make it to webhook endpoint?

As stated in webhook limitation section sometimes media backends don't make it easy to receive those events, as such, to complement webhooks, you should enable import/export tasks by settings their respective environment variables in your docker-compose.yaml file. For more information run help on system:env command as well as system:tasks command.

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Q: How to disable the included HTTP server and use external server?

Set this environment variable in your docker-compose.yaml file WS_DISABLE_HTTP with value of 1. your external server need to send correct fastcgi environment variables. Example caddy file

https://watchstate.example.org {
	# Set the handler to the container ip:9000 and leave [DOCUMENT_ROOT] and [SCRIPT_FILENAME] as they are.
	php_fastcgi watchstate:9000 {
		# Caddy require valid root path for it to proxy fastcgi requests.	 
		# so set this path to empty directory.  
		root * /tmp
		env DOCUMENT_ROOT /opt/app/public
		env SCRIPT_FILENAME /opt/app/public/index.php
	}
}

Q: How to disable the included cache server and use external cache server?

Set this environment variable in your docker-compose.yaml file WS_DISABLE_CACHE with value of 1. to use external redis server you need to alter the value of WS_CACHE_URL environment variable. the format for this variable is redis://host:port?password=auth&db=db_num, for example to use redis from another container you could use something like redis://redis:6379?password=my_secert_password&db=8. We only support redis at the moment.

Once that done, restart the container.