Plex Wrapped

Introduction

A website-based platform and API for collecting Plex user stats within a set timeframe using Tautulli. The data is displayed as a stat-summary, sort of like Spotify Wrapped. Yes, you need Tautulli to have been running beforehand and currently for this to work.

Features

• Custom timeframes
• Custom introduction
• Movies, shows & music
• Caching of results
• Friendly, dynamic display for statistics with nice illustrations
• Email and username search
• Admin page with authentication for settings
• Pre-caching of data

Credit

• Beautiful illustrations downloaded from FreeWebIllustrations
• Amazing statistics gathered using Tautulli
• Wonderful loading icon from icons8

Instructions

This is a web-based platform. Place it in a webserver like Apache or Nginx and make sure it processes PHP content.

There are things to know when you are up and running:

• The configuration is stored in config/config.json, but can be configured using the admin menu, located at: your-domain-or-ip/admin
• The cache is stored in config/cache.json, but can be cleared using the admin menu previously mentioned.
• Your password is hashed and stored in the config/config.json. This is a sensetive directory!
• If you visit your-domain-or-ip/caching you can do a pre-caching. This is very useful if you want to prepare for a lot of traffic and have a large timeframe with entries. I recommend setting up the platform at the admin page and then running a pre-cache immediately. The cache is updated automatically if new data in the timeframe becomes available.

Manual setup

Here is an example of running this platform. This is a general approach, as there are multiple ways to host a webserver with PHP installed.

XAMPP

XAMPP is a completely free, easy to install Apache distribution containing MariaDB, PHP, and Perl. The XAMPP open source package has been set up to be incredibly easy to install and to use. This is their website. It works on Windows, Linux and MacOs.

Install XAMPP thorugh the installer and open up the GUI. From there you can start the Apache webserver with a single button. We don't need any of the other tools included, but make sure the status of the module is green. PHP should be pre-configured.

Install Plex-Wrapped

Download this repo and place the files in a folder inside the documentroot of XAMPPs apache server. This is typically 'C:\xampp\htdocs', but this will change depending on your system and configuration of XAMPP during installation. For instance, for my location of XAMPP and the repo files is 'C:\xampp\htdocs\plex-wrapped', which in turn makes the files accessable on http://localhost/plex-wrapped.

Config folder configuration

You need to give PHP permission to read and write to files in the directory called config. This is where the API saves the cache, configuration and writes the log.

The directory contains sensitive information that must be only accessed by the PHP scripts! There is an .htaccess file included that blocks traffic to the folder, but that is effective with Apache. If you are using Nginx you must add a directory deny in your Nginx configuration!

In Windows I never had to change permissions for the folder, PHP could access it by defult. In Linux I had go give read/write access by using chmod. In the example below I change the config directory folder permissions recursively.

$ sudo chmod -R 0777 /var/www/html/config

Test

Everything should now work, and the rest of the setup should be done on the admin page, followed up by a pre-caching on the caching page. You might have to refer to PHP configuration section below if PHP is acting up.

Docker

Docker sets up the environment, but I recommend reading the start of these instructions sections for an explanation of functionality! You might have to refer to the PHP configuration section below if PHP is acting up.

Docker makes it easy, but you might want to change the setup. The pre-configured Dockerfile is in the docker folder of this repo. It's a really simple configuration, so modify it if you want and then build it. If you just want to launch the pre-built image of Plex-Wrapped, simply execute this docker command, pulling the image from Docker Hub and exposing it on port 80:

$ docker run -p '80:80' --name 'plex-wrapped' aunefyren/plex-wrapped:latest

It should now be accessable on: http://localhost

If you use Docker Compose you could do something like this in your docker-compose.yml:

version: '3.3'
services:
    plex-wrapped:
        ports:
            - '80:80'
        container_name: plex-wrapped
        image: 'aunefyren/plex-wrapped:latest'

And launch the file with

$ docker-compose up

PHP Configuration

PHP will have issues with this API based on the data available in Tautulli and your settings. If you have a large time frame for your wrapped period (like a full year), and there are a huge amount of Tautulli entries, you can have multiple issues. Pre-caching deals with a lot of these problems, so make sure you have it enabled, but configuring PHP might still be necessary. Test out the platform and if you have issues, check this list for possible solutions.

In your php.ini file you may have to change:

• max_execution_time=enough seconds for the script to finish. The longer the timeframe and the less info that is cached, the more execution time. Every unique date in your timeframe is a new Tautulli API call.
• memory_limit=enough M for the script to handle JSON data. If there is a lot of data, PHP needs to have enough memory to manage it without crashing. This still applies if caching is on, as PHP needs to be able to read the cache without crashing.
• max_input_time=enough seconds for the script to parse JSON data. You might not need to change this, depending on Tautulli connection speed.

Need help?

If you have any issues feel free to contact me. I am always trying to improve the project. If I can't, many people on several forums (including /r/plex) might be able to assist you.

Goodybye.