m3u-ipytv 0.2.8

A library for handling M3U playlists for IPTV (AKA m3u_plus)

A python3 library to parse IPTV playlists in the M3U Plus format.

M3U Plus and IPTV

The M3U Plus format is a de facto standard for distributing IPTV playlists on the Internet.

The terms IPTV playlist and M3U Plus playlist are generally used interchangeably, but in this repository M3U Plus refers to the data format, while IPTV Playlist refers to playlists in M3U Plus format.

M3U Plus stems from the extended M3U8 format, of which it supports only 2 tags (#EXTM3U and #EXTINF).

The syntax of the #EXTM3U and #EXTINF tags has been modified to include extra attributes (e.g., logo, group, language). Unfortunately this has broken the backward compatibility with the original M3U8 standard (as explained in detail here).

This library has been created from scratch to parse and handle the M3U Plus format only. It does not fully support regular M3U8 playlists (only basic channel attributes are parsed).

Supported tags

Only #EXTM3U, #EXTINF and plain url rows are supported (i.e. they are parsed and their value is made available as properties of an IPTVChannel object).

All tags that are found between an #EXTINF row and its related url row are added as extras to a channel, but without performing any parsing (i.e. they're treated like plain strings).

In the example below, the #EXTVLCOPT row is not parsed, but copied as-is:

#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="" tvg-name="hello" tvg-country="IT" tvg-url="" group-title="Greetings",Hello!
#EXTVLCOPT:http-user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:76.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/76.0 
https://my-website.com/vod/hello.ts

Installation

This library requires Python 3 (and the related pip installer).

PLEASE NOTE: the library makes use of the multiprocessing.Pool class that requires some care when working with the IDLE environment.

To install the library system-wide, run:

pip install m3u-ipytv

To install it within a virtual environment, run:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install m3u-ipytv

Usage

Modules

The library comprises several modules, each with a specific area of competence:

• channel
  • Everything related to the handling of channels in a playlist.
• doctor
  • A collection of functions to fix common errors found in M3U files.
• exceptions
  • All the exceptions thrown by the library.
• m3u
  • Constants and functions related to M3U files.
• playlist
  • Everything related to the loading and handling of M3U playlists.

Loading an IPTV Playlist

From a file

Use the playlist.loadf(file) function:

from ipytv import playlist

file = "~/Documents/my_playlist.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadf(file)
print(pl.length())

from a URL

Use the playlist.loadu(url) function:

from ipytv import playlist

url = "https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/classic.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadu(url)
print(pl.length())

From a string

Use the playlist.loads(string) function:

from ipytv import playlist

string = """#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="Rai 1" tvg-name="Rai 1" group-title="RAI",Rai 1
http://myown.link:80/luke/210274/78482"""
pl = playlist.loads(string)
print(pl.length())

From a list

Use the playlist.loadl(rows) function:

from ipytv import playlist

rows = [
    '#EXTM3U',
    '#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="Rai 1" tvg-name="Rai 1" group-title="RAI",Rai 1',
    'http://myown.link:80/luke/210274/78482'
]
pl = playlist.loadl(rows)
print(pl.length())

M3UPlaylist class

Every load function above returns an object of the M3UPlaylist class.

This class models the concept of a playlist (which is, basically, a list of channels) and offers methods to interact with the playlist itself and with its channels.

There are two main properties in a playlist, and they are:

1. Attributes
2. Channels

What these properties are and how they can be accessed is described in the next paragraphs.

Accessing the attributes of a playlist

Key-value pairs that are specified in the #EXTM3U row are treated as playlist-wide attributes (i.e. they apply to the playlist itself or to every channel in the playlist).

For example the x-tvg-url part below:

#EXTM3U x-tvg-url="http://myown.link:80/luke/220311/22311"

These attributes, in the form of a dictionary, can be accessed via the get_attributes() method:

from ipytv import playlist

url = "https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/kids.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadu(url)
attributes = pl.get_attributes()
for k, v in attributes.items():
    print(f'"{k}": "{v}"')

In alternative, when the name of the property is known beforehand, its value can be retrieved with:

from ipytv import playlist

url = "https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/kids.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadu(url)
attributes = pl.get_attributes()
tvg_url = pl.get_attribute("x-tvg-url")
print(f"x-tvg-url: {tvg_url}")

The attributes can also be added, modified and removed by using the following methods:

from ipytv.playlist import M3UPlaylist

pl = M3UPlaylist()
attribute_name = 'tvg-shift'
# Add the 'tvg-shift' attribute and set it to 1
pl.add_attribute(attribute_name, "1")
# Update the 'tvg-shift' attribute to -2
pl.update_attribute(attribute_name, "-2")
# Completely remove the 'tvg-shift' attribute
value_before_deletion = pl.remove_attribute(attribute_name)

There is also a method that allows to add multiple attributes at once (instead of single attributes) in the form of a dictionary:

pl.add_attributes({})

Accessing the channels of a playlist

The M3UPlaylist class is basically a list of channels with some commodity functions. The channels in a playlist can be accessed by using one of the following methods.

Individually (by index)

By using the get_channel(index) method:

from ipytv import playlist

url = "https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/classic.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadu(url)
# Let's retrieve the first channel in the list
channel = pl.get_channel(0)
print(f'channel \"{channel.name}\": {channel.url}')
# The next line will throw IndexOutOfBoundsException
channel = pl.get_channel(-1)

Iteratively

By looping over the channels in an M3UPlaylist object:

from ipytv import playlist

url = "https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/classic.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadu(url)
for channel in pl:
    print(f'channel \"{channel.name}\": {channel.url}')

Low level

In all cases where the previous two access methods are not sufficient, the inner channel list can be accessed via the get_channels() method:

from ipytv import playlist

url = "https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/classic.m3u"
pl = playlist.loadu(url)
chan_list = pl.get_channels()
ten_channels = chan_list[:10] 

The channels can also be added, modified and removed by using the following methods:

from ipytv.playlist import M3UPlaylist
from ipytv.channel import IPTVChannel

pl = M3UPlaylist()
channel = IPTVChannel()
# Add a channel to the end of the list (last index)
pl.append_channel(channel)
# Insert a channel in the specified position (all succeeding channels are
# shifted right by 1 position)
pl.insert_channel(0, channel)
new_channel = IPTVChannel()
# Replace the second channel of the playlist with a new channel
pl.update_channel(1, new_channel)
# Remove the channel at the specified position (all succeeding channels are
# shifted left by 1 position)
old_channel = pl.remove_channel(0)

There are also two methods that allow to add list of channels (instead of single channels):

pl.append_channels([])
pl.insert_channels([])

Accessing the properties of a channel

The get_channels() method of an M3UPlaylist object returns a list of objects of the IPTVChannel class.

An IPTVChannel object has 3 basic properties (url, name and duration) and two optional fields: attributes (a dictionary) and extras (a list of strings).

For example:

from ipytv.channel import IPTVAttr, IPTVChannel

channel = IPTVChannel(
    url="http://myown.link:80/luke/210274/78482",
    name="Rai 1",
    duration="-1",
    attributes={
        IPTVAttr.TVG_ID.value: "Rai 1",
        IPTVAttr.TVG_NAME.value: "Rai 1",
        IPTVAttr.TVG_LOGO.value: "https://static.epg.best/it/RaiUno.it.png",
        IPTVAttr.GROUP_TITLE.value: "RAI"
    },
    extras=['#EXTVLCOPT:http-user-agent=Lavf53.32.100']
)
print(channel.name)
print(channel.attributes[IPTVAttr.GROUP_TITLE.value])
print(channel.extras[0])

The IPTVAttr enum class contains attribute names that are commonly found in IPTV Playlists.

The doctor module

Internet-sourced IPTV playlists, often contain a number of format errors. This module aims to detect and fix some of these errors.

The module contains three classes, each with its own scope:

1. M3UDoctor
   • It contains methods to fix errors in m3u files (i.e. errors that would make it impossible to load an m3u file as a playlist).
2. IPTVChannelDoctor
   • It contains methods to fix errors in a channel (i.e. errors in the attributes of an #EXTINF row).
3. M3UPlaylistDoctor
   • It applies the fixes in IPTVChannelDoctor to all channels in the playlist.

All the classes above offer one public, static method named sanitize() that is in charge of applying all different fixes. It can be used as follows:

from ipytv.doctor import M3UDoctor, M3UPlaylistDoctor
from ipytv import playlist

with open('my-broken-playlist.m3u', encoding='utf-8') as in_file:
    content = in_file.readlines()
    fixed_content = M3UDoctor.sanitize(content)
    pl = playlist.loadl(fixed_content)
    fixed_pl = M3UPlaylistDoctor.sanitize(pl)
    with open('my-fixed-playlist.m3u', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as out_file:
        content = fixed_pl.to_m3u_plus_playlist()
        out_file.write(content)

Logging

IPyTV supports python's standard logging system.

To enable IPyTV's logging, add a logging configuration to your application:

import logging
from ipytv import playlist

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
pl = playlist.loadu("https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/categories/classic.m3u")

Format considerations

The extensions to the #EXTM3U and #EXTINF tags introduced by the M3U Plus format have broken the compatibility with the M3U8 format.

This is what a standard #EXTINF row should look like:

#EXTINF:-1,Rai 1

The format is pretty straightforward:

#EXTINF:<duration>,[<title>]

Let's break it down:

1. The #EXTINF: tag.
2. The duration of the content (as an integer or float, signed or not).
3. A comma character.
4. A title.

This is what an #EXTINF row in the M3U Plus format looks like:

#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="Rai 1" tvg-name="Rai 1" tvg-logo="https://static.epg.best/it/RaiUno.it.png" group-title="RAI",Rai 1

If we break it down, we see that points 3. and 4. below have been added (and they break the previous definition for the #EXTINF tag):

1. The #EXTINF: tag.
2. The duration of the content (as an integer or float, signed or not).
3. A space.
4. A variable-length, space-separated list of attributes.
5. A comma character.
6. A title.

The attributes in point 4 are in the attribute="value" format, where value may also contain non-escaped commas and, sometimes, even unescaped double quotes. This really complicates the parsing logic.

It's worth noting that the M3U8 RFC document specifies how attribute lists should be formatted, but the M3U Plus implementation doesn't comply with the standard.

In conclusion, the M3U Plus format with its quirks and idiosyncrasies is hard to read for humans and hard to parse for computers. It's an ugly format, but it's too widespread to be ignored and for Python to lack a parsing library.

On a funny note, this is how the VLC programmers named the parsing function for the IPTV playlists in the M3U Plus format:

static void parseEXTINFIptvDiots(...)

Just saying... :sweat_smile:

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.

See LICENSE.txt for details.