4. Simple meta

We call meta a single catalog entry. In this case, it will be a movie. The meta provides information for the user. Some of the most notable details are, for example, the title of the movie, its director and cast, poster, logo and so on. Here we will describe one example of a movie to give you an idea of how this works.

In most cases Stremio's internal add-on Cinemeta will handle the metadata for you, as long as you use IMDB IDs for your items. Feel free to skip this step if your add-on doesn't need custom meta.

Importance of metadata

Stremio provides the Cinemeta add-on because of the importance of metadata. If we want superb user experience, we need to provide high quality data. Cinemeta provides metadata by IMDB ID.

What if your video is not featured in IMDB? It may be an indie movie or a video created by you that you've uploaded somewhere. In cases like this we provide a way for your add-on to describe the content it provides.

Update the manifest

You need to tell Stremio that your add-on provides additional metadata for otherwise unknown content.

"resources": [
    "catalog",
    {
        "name": "meta",
        "types": ["movie"],
        "idPrefixes": ["hiwrld_"]
    }
]

Here we introduce a new way of describing a resource - with an object. This object provides not only the name of the resource, but also what types of content it will describe and also a prefix filter. We call the prefix filter idPrefixes. In its essence it is an array of prefixes that Stremio checks against to decide whether to ask your add-on for data or not.

Here is how it looks in your manifest now:

{
    "id": "my.first.stremio.add-on",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "name": "Hello, World",
    "description" : "My first Stremio add-on",
    "logo": "https://www.stremio.com/website/stremio-logo-small.png",
    "resources": [
        "catalog",
        {
            "name": "meta",
            "types": ["movie"],
            "idPrefixes": ["hiwrld_"]
        }
    ],
    "types": ["movie"],
    "catalogs": [
        {"id": "movieCatalog", "type": "movie", "name": "Hello, Movies"}
    ]
}

Apart from the catalog, every other resource in Stremio makes use of IDs and therefore may be filtered by idPrefixes.

In your case you stated that any ID that starts with hiwrld_ may be handled by your add-on. In case that your add-on is unable to provide data for this ID, Stremio will ask the next one that matches the requested ID.

Challenge Stremio

Now you stated that you will handle meta items which ID starts with hiwrld_, but your add-on does not provide an item with such ID. So let's create one.

In the previous step you've created a catalog with two movies. All of them are indexed in IMDB. The next step is to update your catalog with one more meta item that happens to be a movie not featured in IMDB - a jellyfish video.

Let's create a catalog entry for the video. Append the following listing in the metas array of your catalog.

{
    "id": "hiwrld_jellyfish",
    "type": "movie",
    "name": "Jellyfish",
    "poster": "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1496108493338-3b30de66f9be",
    "genres": ["Demo", "Nature"]
}

Your catalog should look like this now:

{
    "metas": [
        { "type": "movie", "id": "tt0032138", "name": "The Wizard of Oz", "poster": "https://images.metahub.space/poster/medium/tt0032138/img", "genres": ["Adventure", "Family", "Fantasy", "Musical"] },
        { "type": "movie", "id": "tt0017136", "name": "Metropolis", "poster": "https://images.metahub.space/poster/medium/tt0017136/img", "genres": ["Drama", "Sci-Fi"] },
        {
            "id": "hiwrld_jellyfish",
            "type": "movie",
            "name": "Jellyfish",
            "poster": "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1496108493338-3b30de66f9be",
            "genres": ["Demo", "Nature"]
        }
    ]
}

Provide metadata

If your add-on matches the type and prefix, Stremio will ask it for metadata. The route's location would be /meta/<type>/<meta id>.json. As of now, you provide only the movie type.

mkdir -p meta/movie
mkdir meta\movie

You have the path ready, so now you can create your meta/movie/hiwrld_jellyfish.json containing the video metadata you want to show. As we said in the previous step, the catalog entries are meta preview, so you will build upon it.

{
    "meta": {
        "id": "hiwrld_jellyfish",
        "type": "movie",
        "name": "Jellyfish",
        "poster": "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1496108493338-3b30de66f9be",
        "genres": ["Demo", "Nature"],
        "description": "A .mkv video clip useful for testing the network streaming and playback performance of media streamers & HTPCs.",
        "cast": ["Some random jellyfishes"],
        "director": ["ScottAllyn"],
        "logo": "https://b.kisscc0.com/20180705/yee/kisscc0-art-forms-in-nature-jellyfish-recapitulation-theor-jellyfish-5b3dcabcb00692.802484341530776252721.png",
        "background": "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1461783470466-185038239ee3",
        "runtime": "30 sec"
    }
}

As you can see, we have added a lot more data to our meta info. You can check all the fields available in the API documentation.

Test the meta

You can now reinstall the add-on again as described in step 2. You will see the new Jellyfish video in your catalog. When you click on it, Stremio will request the meta resource from your add-on. This can be seen in the log of our HTTP server. Now all the information you defined above will be displayed.

Summary

If you check our add-on now, you'll notice the new jellyfish movie with pretty pictures and a nice description. In the next step you will add some streams so you can watch the movies.

← 3. The catalog5. Providing streams →