Wizarr Backend Rewrite

[realashleybailey]

Dear Wizarr Community,

We are thrilled to share some enchanting news with you -- the backend of our beloved software, Wizarr, is undergoing a transformative rewrite! The magic of Python has gracefully passed its wand to the dynamic charm of TypeScript, promising a spellbinding experience for both our developers and users.

Why TypeScript?

Wizarr's previous backend, powered by Python, served us well. However, as the magic of technology evolves, so must we. The decision to transition to TypeScript was driven by several factors:

• Strong Typing: TypeScript's static typing brings an additional layer of predictability to our codebase. This helps catch potential issues early in the development process, making our software more robust and reliable.
• Enhanced Developer Experience: TypeScript's intelligent code completion and comprehensive tooling empower our developers, making the coding experience more enjoyable and efficient.
• Scalability and Maintainability: With TypeScript, we embrace a scalable architecture that will support Wizarr's growth and make maintaining and extending the codebase a breeze.

What Changes Can You Expect?

The transition to TypeScript is not just a behind-the-scenes improvement; it comes with tangible benefits for our users:

• Performance Boosts: TypeScript's statically typed nature allows for better optimization, potentially leading to improved backend performance and response times.
• New Features on the Horizon: The new backend sets the stage for exciting features and enhancements that were challenging to implement with the previous architecture. Stay tuned for announcements about upcoming functionalities!

Development Process

The journey from Python to TypeScript is a long and complicated process. Our development team are working tirelessly to rewrite lines of code to ensure a seamless transition.

How Can You Get Involved?

As we work on our new backend, we invite you to join the conversation. Share your thoughts, feedback, and experiences with us on Discord. Your insights are invaluable as we continue to enhance Wizarr.

What Features are they to Except?

The magical thing about us moving to Typescript is that it will bring forth some much-requested features, we held off on these because of the limitations that Python had on our development environment.

So, with the advent of this change both users and developers are expected to see the following features:

• Multi-Server Support: Finally, will Wizarr support the ability to host multiple media servers of both Jellyfin & Plex, there will be no limit on how many servers you wish to add, users of both will be able to managed together under the same Wizarr interface.

  • We expect to add support for syncing users and configurations between media servers of the same type, for example syncing two Jellyfin servers so they both share the same users.
  • If you were to run two independent media servers with syncing disabled, we hope to allow admins to copy users from one server to another server, while also copying any permissions associated with that user.
  • We will introduce a dropdown for selecting which media server you wish to create an invitation to, exception to this is if a media server has syncing enabled, all media server instances with syncing enabled will show up as a single instance of that media server.

• Advanced Permissions System: We will work hard to bring a permission management system to Wizarr, this will allow admins to assign the granted permissions a Jellyfin/Plex user will receive when accepting an invitation.

  • Wizarr's new permission management system will allow you to create permission templates that can be assigned to invitations, these permission templates will then be used when creating new invitations and subsequent users who sign up with that invitation.
  • Permissions will be able to be copied between users, even if those users are on different media servers, with the exception of synced media servers whereby these permissions will be automatically synced for the same user across multiple instances.
  • We are looking to work on a permissions translation layer, this will in hopes translate Jellyfin permissions to Plex permissions as best as possible.

• Wizarr Customizations: We will be adding support for custom theming of Wizarr's frontend with both theme colour inputs and custom CSS injection.

• Server Configuration: We are removing part of the Wizarr media setup process, you will no longer be required to input API keys during media server setup, we are refining this process by giving admins the option to login with their standard Jellyfin/Plex or Emby username & password.

  • Wizarr will automatically use your username & password to authorise with Jellyfin/Emby or Plex media servers, it will automatically create the relevant API keys needed and store this authorization key in its database for making future API calls.
  • API key setup will still be an available option during setup in case of issue with the above aforementioned setup procedure.

• Emby Support: Emby will be officially supported by Wizarr and Wizarr will update its verbiage to both support this too, when setting up Wizarr Emby will become an available option during setup.

• Offline Servers: Wizarr backend is expected to support your media server going offline, the benefits of this are if a user attempts to accept an invitation from Wizarr to your media server but your media server is currently offline for some undefined reason.

  • If a user attempts to join your media server through Wizarr while your media server is offline, Wizarr will hold this request for user creation in an event queue, Wizarr will begin to ping your media server every set interval until your media server comes online, at this point Wizarr will process all relevant API calls to your media server that have built up in the event queue.
  • User's that attempt to sign up to your media server during this downtime will be served with a message that your media server is offline but their account is waiting to be processed. They will be presented with an option to opt into an email when your media server comes back online.

• Notifications: We are introducing notifications back into Wizarr, a very minimal version of this was previously available in Wizarr V2 that is now deprecated, we decided to hold off introducing this to Wizarr V3 until we knew we had a foundation to develop a notification system that had genuine functionality.

  • Part of building Wizarr's notification system, we will introduce SMTP support, this will be an available endpoint for receiving Wizarr notifications however we have more on that further on in this newsletter.
  • Other notification endpoints will include Pushover, Twilio, Discord, Webhook & Native Browser Notifications.
  • Notification endpoints will have a list of notification events that can be toggled to bring fine grained control over what notification's you wish to receive.
  • Webhook notification endpoints will supersede the current webhook integration in Wizarr, what this means is we will deprecate the old webhook system in favour of this new one.
    • The new webhook notification integration will have a payload editor whereby you can construct your own payload and inject the relevant data using handlebars and JSON.

• SMTP: We are bringing SMTP to Wizarr for a multitude of reasons, the primary being to support emailing your media server users and allowing admins to receive notifications about Wizarr server events.

  • We are looking to allowing admin's one of two routes when it comes to SMTP in Wizarr
    • Standard SMTP: This will work as standard allowing you to route emails from Wizarr directly to your SMTP server.
    • Fast SMTP: This is for those who don't wish to tackle with setting up and configuring your own SMTP provider, this will work by allowing you to channel your Wizarr server's emails to a randomly generated email provided by Wizarr's cloud service, we are aiming to make this feature part of Wizarr's paid service, the reason why is because it relies on Wizarr's cloud servers to operate and these cost money to host and maintain.
  • Email templates for Wizarr will be customizable allowing you to personalise the look and feel of them, this will not be available to admin's making use of Wizarr's cloud emailing service.

• Wizarr SDK: This one is more for developers; however, we will be introducing a fully working SDK allowing for people wishing to interface with Wizarr from external software sources a Typescript compatible SDK.

  • We will work on documentation as well to accompany this SDK
  • Swagger endpoints will also still be available on your Wizarr instance at /api/docs

We want your help
If you are a Typescript or Vue 3 developer then please contact us, currently the project development is headed up by one person (myself the admin) and bringing onboard new developers would really do the project justice.

How to Donate?
If you want to donate to Wizarr, we host an Open Collective at opencollective.com/wizarr and all donation are welcome, we use them to help reinvest directly back into Wizarr.

Thank you,
Wizarr Team