Keep channel IDs fixed on upstream URL changes

[threax11]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
My IPTV provider frequently updates the channel URLs which in turn causes m3ufilter to also update the internal mapping and assigns a new "channel number" to it. I have clients pointing to the m3ufilter playlist and whenever that happens I need to re-load the playlist to get the new working url. I'm using m3ufilter reverse proxy setting.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be cool to have a setting that would keep the channel mappings based on the name & group (just as a thought) instead considering the url as well. So whenever the url of a channel changes, but everything else stays the same the proxy url would be constant.

Current behavior: Channel A has a reverse proxy url of http://host/m3u-stream/iptv/iptv/1. If the channel url changes it would get a different url in the m3u file like http://host/m3u-stream/iptv/iptv/123. Also I'm not sure if the mapping db is growing with each change or old (nonworking) mappings would get cleaned up?

Thanks! I hope it was clear what the problem is :D

[euzu]

@threax11 What do you mean by channel ID? Are you referring to the channel number?

If the provider URL changes, how can you map the provider's channels to the existing stored channels?

However, if the provider ID doesn’t change, then we can reassign the old channel numbers.

Currently the provider channel is identified by the provider id.

Do you have any suggestions how to solve this issue with changing provider ids ?

[threax11]

I guess I mean the channel number, sorry for not being precise enough. I'm referring to the number in the m3ufilter url shown above.

So basically the upstream m3u looks something like this

#EXTINF:-1 channel-number="11" channel-id="12345" tvg-id="abc12345" tvg-chno="11" tvg-name="FOOBAR HD" group-title="Sport" tvg-logo="http://upstreamhost/logo", FOOBAR HD
http://upstreamhost/?token=<token>

After some time the upstream m3u will change the <token>in the url but the rest stays the same. So you are saying in this case the "channel number" should not change in m3ufilter?

[euzu]

@threax11 You want the channel numbers to remain stable after updates? I’ll need to see how I can make that possible in case the URL changes.

From your example i think you are referring to the id ?

http://host/m3u-stream/iptv/iptv/1. -> http://host/m3u-stream/iptv/iptv/123

This is a real problem, because changing the url means changing the uuid. m3u-filter uses the url as uuid. I need to think about this problem

[threax11]

Yes exactly.

I was expecting something like that... Maybe an option/switch to use something like hashdigest(tvg-id + tvg-name) as uuid instead of url per input source?

[euzu]

@threax11 i understood the problem. I will try to find a solution and keep you updated.

[aniel300]

we did try to tackle this in past but this was the best system we came up with. hopefully @euzu can come up with a persistent solution.