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Add methods for replacing playlist items in Player #8046
Description
[REQUIRED] Use case description
In Exoplayer v2.12.0 the new playlist/MediaItem API is missing methods for replacing an existing item(s) at a given position.
The feature is needed if someone needs to refresh the metadata/clipping data/duration/... of an item already in the playlist. In my case I am using a diffing library to update the playlist via a change script which results in add/remove/change/move calls. Yes, one can always do a remove/add, but calling Player.addMediaItems() then Player.removeMediaItems() results in multiple playlist change notifications. I was a bit amazed that there's even a bulk move method (Player.moveMediaItems()), but nothing for changing an existing item.
Proposed solution
Add Player.replaceItem(int, MediaItem) and Player.replaceItems(Int, List<MediaItem>) methods or something similar.
Activity
marcbaechinger commentedon Oct 6, 2020
Yes, that's a very reasonable request. Thanks for filing!
tonihei commentedon Oct 6, 2020
Out of interest, why is getting multiple playlist change notifications a problem for your case? I think we discussed
replaceItemat some point and concluded you can always useremove+addto achieve the same goal. Note that this is different frommoveMediaItemthat provides additional functionality to ensure even the currently playing item can move without interrupting playback.georgi-neykov-hub commentedon Oct 6, 2020
With the new media2 extension each player timeline change notification triggers notifications for media session's playlist changes which involve posting on a
Handler, submitting (and allocating)Runnables to an Executor and so on. Adding and using the requested methods during calls toSessionPlayerConnector.replacePlaylistItem ()or direcly callingPlayer.replaceItem()on an instance hooked to aSessionPlayerConnectorwould reduce the overhead significantly.georgi-neykov-hub commentedon Oct 6, 2020
@tonihei , how can the
MediaItemfor the currently playing item be updated? With the current properties it's basically the title of the item?Would the playback be interrupted if the currently played item's
MediaItemis replaced with a new one with the samemediaId, but with possible differences in other fields?marcbaechinger commentedon Oct 7, 2020
Replacing the media item would mean replacing the underlying
MediaSourceand this would interrupt the currently playing media when replaced and prepare the new media source that's created for the new media item internally.Do I understand correctly that you actually would rather want to only update the
MetaDatapart (currently only holding the title) or theMediaItem.PlaybackProperties.tag?georgi-neykov-hub commentedon Oct 9, 2020
Well, not explicitly, but I am also interested how this can be achieved with the current API.
The reason for the request is to be able run any player playlist updates though a diffing library and apply a list of minimal changes so that bigger playlists can be updated in a efficient manner. The obvious choice is
DiffUtilin theandroidx.recyclerviewlibrary, which uses E. Myers' algorithm and builds a change script with add/remove/change/move operations.Not that the setup doesn't work with the current APIs, I'm just worried about the unnecesary playback state updates and notifications done on each step and searching for ways to reduce them.
I'm even considering of adding a feature request for methods for controlling these notifications or the ability to do batches of changes and report them as a single change.
marcbaechinger commentedon Oct 9, 2020
Ok, thanks for clarification. If you are going to replace items in the queue in that sense 'blindly' by just running the recorded changes of another object graph, you can probably not know in advance whether this will remove or replace the playing media item which would led to a interruption of playback. This will be the case with a replaceMediaItems(...) method as well, when the range of replaced items contains the playing item.
I suggest we leave this issue being an
enhancementabout this request around adding a methodreplaceMediaItemsto keep things manageable.1 remaining item
emagombe commentedon Dec 24, 2022
I have the same need.
But I got a writing this code
int count = exoPlayer.getMediaItemCount();exoPlayer.addMediaSources(count, mediaSources);exoPlayer.seekTo(count, 0);if(count > 0) {exoPlayer.removeMediaItems(0, count);}exoPlayer.prepare();Basically it adds a list of mediasources below the current list, changes the index to the first item of the new list and then removes all the items above and reindex to 0.
It works fine. I tried exoPlayer.clearMediaItems() but for me it crashes the notification so this method works better.
marcbaechinger commentedon Jan 3, 2023
I'm not sure I understand what is the difference of the code above and this line
The above line seems to do the same, but with less code. Is there a difference in behaviour with your approach?
emagombe commentedon Feb 8, 2023
Lol, yeah, it works the same way. Thanks!
Add Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Add Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Implement Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Implement Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Add Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Implement Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Add Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Implement Player.replaceMediaItem(s)
Mohammad3638363 commentedon Aug 3, 2023
Mohammad3638363 commentedon Aug 6, 2023
شكرا جزيلا