iptvnator/docs/architecture/workspace-dashboard.md

Workspace Dashboard

This document records the current dashboard implementation inside the workspace shell.

Related:

• Workspace Shell

Summary

• The dashboard is the default /workspace landing page.
• It is a rail-based content surface (Netflix / Apple TV pattern), not a customizable widget grid.
• Layout order is static and curated — there is no edit mode, drag-drop, or size stepper. Each rail has a persisted show/hide toggle (Settings.dashboardRails, DashboardRailsSettings in libs/shared/interfaces/src/lib/settings.interface.ts, surfaced under Settings → Dashboard); every template rail is gated by dashboardRails().<key>. Rails additionally auto-hide when empty.
• First-run users see the shared welcome empty-state with a single primary CTA to add their first playlist.

Core implementation:

1. libs/workspace/dashboard/feature/src/lib/rails/workspace-dashboard-rails.component.ts — the page-level facade.
2. libs/workspace/dashboard/feature/src/lib/rails/dashboard-rail.component.ts — the reusable horizontal rail.
3. libs/workspace/dashboard/data-access/src/lib/dashboard-data.service.ts — data aggregation (recent items, favorites, playlist stats). Shared across rails.
4. libs/playlist/shared/ui/src/lib/recent-playlists/empty-state/empty-state.component.ts — reused welcome state with the primary "Add your first playlist" CTA.

Page Structure

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Hero — Continue Watching (most recent item)                        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Continue Watching · See all →                                      │
│  [poster][poster][poster][poster] →→                                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Live now on your favorites · See all →                             │
│  [channel][channel][channel][channel] →→                            │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Recently watched live TV · See all →                               │
│  [channel][channel][channel][channel] →→                            │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Favorite movies & series · See all →                               │
│  [poster][poster][poster][poster] →→                                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Recently Used Sources · See all →                                  │
│  [tile][tile][tile][tile] →→                                        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Recently Added on Xtream (aggregated across providers)             │
│  [poster][poster][poster] →→                                        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Because you watched X (TMDB, opt-in, Electron-only)                │
│  [poster][poster][poster] →→                                        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Trending this week (TMDB, opt-in, Electron-only)                   │
│  [poster][poster][poster] →→                                        │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Render rules:

1. Dashboard rails render independently as their data sources resolve. The page no longer uses dashboardReady() as a page-wide skeleton gate. Initial hero/recent/favorites loading states render scoped skeletons so one slow rail does not hide already available content.
2. hasPlaylists() === false → render <app-empty-state [type]="'welcome-dashboard'"> full-bleed. All rails and the hero are skipped.
3. hero() = globalRecentItems()[0]. If present, render the hero panel.
4. Each rail is emitted via @if (cards.length > 0). Empty rails are hidden — there is no "empty widget" placeholder.
5. The continue-watching hero prefers a stored Xtream backdrop_url; when it is missing the UI falls back to a blurred poster treatment instead of showing a flat panel.
6. Live favorites are promoted into their own live rail; movie/series favorites render in a separate Favorite movies & series rail (favoriteMoviesAndSeriesCards, data-test-id="dashboard-favorite-vod-rail", mapped from globalFavoriteItems() filtered to movie/series). Full mixed favorites management stays on /workspace/global-favorites.
7. The live favorites rail keeps its scoped skeleton until the initial global favorites load has completed for both Xtream-backed and playlist-backed favorites. This avoids first-paint partial counts such as a single Stalker favorite appearing before M3U favorites finish resolving.

Rail Contract

DashboardRailComponent is purely presentational:

1. Inputs: label, items: DashboardRailCard[], optional seeAllLink, optional aspectRatio (default '2 / 3'), optional testId.
2. Behavior: horizontal flex track with scroll-snap-type: x mandatory.
3. Chevron buttons fade in on hover (desktop only via @media (hover: none)).
4. Cards are keyboard-focusable router links; scroll-snap-align: start means arrow-key nav lands on card boundaries.
5. Image handling: loading="lazy", decoding="async", fallback icon tile when imageUrl is missing or error fires.
6. Dashboard hero, rail containers, rail cards, and "Manage all" links expose stable data-test-id hooks. Treat these as the supported Electron E2E selector surface; do not target internal CSS class names.

Data Flow

1. WorkspaceDashboardRailsComponent injects DashboardDataService.
2. It derives the dashboard surface via computed():
   1. hero — first item of globalRecentItems().
   2. continueWatchingCards — maps globalRecentVodItems() to movie/series cover cards. Portal playback positions are bulk-loaded per playlist so hero and cards can show progress, remaining time, and series season/ episode badges. This includes Stalker VOD activity normalized to series through is_series. Series lookup uses keyed maps for both direct episode ids and parent series ids; card renders must not scan the full playback-position map. The badge uses saved seasonNumber / episodeNumber metadata and does not infer it from provider payloads; legacy rows without that metadata remain badge-less until replay. Dashboard-originated Xtream series clicks also carry that exact episode target through the global-recent inline-detail handoff. Once the series metadata and playback positions load, the detail player consumes the target once and resumes the saved episode. Opening the same item normally from the global recent grid remains a detail-only action.
   3. liveFavoriteCardsEnriched and recentLiveCardsEnriched — two independent rails (dashboard-live-favorites-rail and dashboard-recent-live-rail); there is no fallback from one to the other. M3U cards carry an epg_lookup_key using the app-wide XMLTV fallback order (tvg-id -> tvg-name -> channel name); EPG enrichment must use that key before falling back to the card title. That XMLTV lookup is one batched local query for every live card and re-runs on the 30 s tick. Xtream and Stalker cards have no XMLTV key of their own; their "now on air" line comes from the portal, lazily and per card:
      • buildDashboardPortalLiveEpgEntry (dashboard data-access) turns a live PortalActivityItem into the UnifiedCollectionItem the collection pages hand StreamResolverService.loadEpgForItems, keyed by the collection uid — favourites and recent rows of one channel share the answer. Radio rows and rows without a usable provider id get no entry. Cards carry that key as liveEpgSourceKey.
      • lib-dashboard-rail reports the cards inside its track viewport (plus ~one card of rootMargin) through visibleCardsChanged, from an IntersectionObserver rooted at the track; without the API every card counts as visible. Cards that leave the list are reported gone at once.
      • DashboardPortalLiveEpgPresenter (component-provided) unions the visible keys of both rails with the pinned hero key and calls DashboardPortalLiveEpgService.sync() with exactly those entries — on every change, on the 30 s tick, and on a display-offset change.
      • DashboardPortalLiveEpgService (root) owns the queue: at most two requests in flight, 200 ms between starts (the numbers EpgQueueService proved against real panels), one card per request, each answer published the moment it lands in programs, so the page never waits and a slow portal delays no other card. Only wanted keys are dequeued, so a card scrolled past before its turn is never requested. Answers live 60 s; a failed portal is left alone for 30 s; a programme that ended is asked again, but not within 30 s of the last answer (a portal may keep returning the stale row). Every answer is "at the provider clock", so a changed display offset or a changed XMLTV source set drops them all.
      • enrichLiveCards prefers the portal answer, falls back to the XMLTV title match when the portal said "nothing on air", and marks a card nowPlayingState: 'pending' only before its FIRST answer — the channel layout then shows a shimmer placeholder in the programme slot; a refresh keeps the previous answer on screen.
   4. xtreamRecentlyAddedCards — maps xtreamRecentlyAddedItems() to rail cards. Aggregates newly added VOD and series across all Xtream playlists via DashboardDataService.reloadXtreamRecentlyAddedItems(), which calls getGlobalRecentlyAdded('all', limit, 'xtream') with the DB-level playlists.type = 'xtream' filter. The rail is Electron-only (PWA returns []) and auto-hides when empty, so users without Xtream playlists never see it. Cards carry a playlist_name · type subtitle so users can tell which provider each item came from. Driven by an effect that re-runs whenever the Xtream playlist count changes, but the first run waits for globalFavoritesLoaded() so the slower recently-added DB query does not block the live favorites rail on startup.
   5. recommendationCards / trendingCards — the two TMDB rails. Both need the TMDB opt-in AND the Electron DB worker that answers DB_MATCH_TITLES (each is hidden in the PWA), and both load after globalFavoritesLoaded() so the batched title match never competes for the worker at startup. recommendationCards is seeded from recently watched movies/series and only shows titles present in an imported library, hiding itself below five matched cards; its rail label names the seed ("Because you watched X") when exactly one seed contributed. trendingCards shows TMDB's weekly trending and falls back to a prefilled global search for unmatched titles. Contracts: docs/architecture/tmdb-metadata-enrichment.md ("Dashboard Integration").
   6. sourceCards — maps recentPlaylists() to rail cards. recentPlaylists() ranks M3U, Xtream, and Stalker sources by their latest recent activity from globalRecentItems(), then falls back to playlist updateDate / importDate for sources that have never been used.
3. DashboardDataService is passive on construction. The dashboard feature owns the initial reloads for recent items, favorites, and Xtream recently added rows on page entry.
4. No dashboard-local Layout state, no localStorage keys, no migrations. Per-rail visibility is the one persisted preference, and it lives in the global settings store (Settings.dashboardRails), not in a dashboard-owned layout blob.
5. Navigation state + deep-link targets come from the existing getRecentItemLink() / getGlobalFavoriteLink() / getPlaylistLink() helpers on DashboardDataService and reuse the workspace navigation helpers in @iptvnator/portal/shared/util.
6. Xtream VOD and series detail pages opportunistically backfill content.backdrop_url when metadata exposes a backdrop, but that write must not refresh recently viewed ordering by itself.
7. The dashboard feature triggers a fresh reload of DB-backed recent/favorite rows on dashboard entry so newly backfilled backdrop data is visible as soon as the user returns from a detail page.
8. Playback-position reloads are keyed by the VOD/series recent set and should call reloadPlaybackPositions() through untracked() so live-only recent changes do not trigger unnecessary IPC round-trips.
9. Electron M3U dashboard favorites should use PlaylistsService.getM3uFavoriteChannels() first. That method checks the SQLite playlist migration flag and then calls dbGetAppPlaylistFavoriteChannels(playlistId), letting the DB worker return only matched favorite channels instead of sending the full playlist payload back to the renderer. If the bridge method is missing or migration is incomplete, the dashboard falls back to the full playlist read.
10. Electron playlist summary loads should use dbGetAppPlaylistMetas() through PlaylistsService.getAllPlaylists(). This keeps dashboard/source/sidebar startup on a metadata-only SQLite path and avoids parsing full M3U payload blobs for surfaces that only need playlist title, type, counts, favorites, recent activity, and source connection fields. Workflows that need channel payloads still call getPlaylistById().

Empty State

The welcome state is rendered via the existing EmptyStateComponent (type="welcome-dashboard") from libs/playlist/shared/ui:

1. Illustration + headline + description from the existing M3U welcome strings (HOME.PLAYLISTS.WELCOME_*).
2. Primary button emits addPlaylistClicked. The dashboard page wires this to WORKSPACE_SHELL_ACTIONS.openAddPlaylistDialog().
3. Feature chips (M3U / Xtream / Stalker) are provided by the component.

UX Rules

1. Rails represent content the user is likely to resume, not provider internals. Never surface raw API objects.
2. Each rail must auto-hide when its data source is empty.
3. Image assets must degrade to a typed icon fallback — never show broken images or empty tiles.
4. The page must never show "No widgets" style text. If there is no content and no playlists, render the welcome state; otherwise render whatever rails have data.
5. Navigation from a rail card must deep-link into the appropriate workspace route without switching the active playlist in the header switcher.
6. Xtream series hero/Continue Watching clicks with a saved episode position must resume that exact episode while preserving the collection-owned detail and Back behavior. Do not apply autoplay to ordinary collection-grid clicks.
7. Recently Used Sources reflects recent source usage across all provider types, not just recent imports.
8. The live rail title key must match the rendered source: favorites use WORKSPACE.DASHBOARD.LIVE_FAVORITES; the recently-watched-live rail uses WORKSPACE.DASHBOARD.RECENTLY_WATCHED_LIVE_TV (liveRailTitleKeyForSource in rails/dashboard-rail.utils.ts).

Adding Or Changing Rails

Current workflow:

1. Add a new computed() signal for the card list in WorkspaceDashboardRailsComponent, mapping your source data to DashboardRailCard.
2. Drop a <lib-dashboard-rail> in the template, gated by @if (cards.length > 0).
3. If the data source is new, extend DashboardDataService rather than reaching into DB services directly from the component.
4. Provide a seeAllLink only if there is a dedicated "manage all" route for that content type.

Deferred Work

Intentionally out of scope:

1. Customizable layout (drag/drop, resize, freeform reordering). The rail order stays curated and opinionated. (Per-rail show/hide toggles have since shipped via Settings.dashboardRails — see Summary.)
2. Freeform widget grid with collision management.
3. External data rails such as RSS, sports, or news adapters.
4. Per-user A/B variants of rail ordering.