@iptv/playlist

An extremely fast M3U playlist parser and generator for Node and the browser.
Lightweight, dependency-free, and easy to use.

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✨ Features

• Extremely fast M3U parser and generator
• Lightweight (1.34 kB gzipped)
• No dependencies
• ESM and CommonJS support
• Supports Node and the browser
• Supports any M3U #EXTINF & #EXTM3U attribute
• Did I mention it's fast?

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📥 Installation

To install this library, use the following command:

# pnpm
pnpm add @iptv/playlist

# npm
npm install @iptv/playlist

# yarn
yarn add @iptv/playlist

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🔧 Usage

To use this library in your project, first import the functions you need:

import { parseM3U, writeM3U } from "@iptv/playlist";

Then, you can parse an M3U file and receive back an M3uPlaylist object:

Example M3U File

Examples will be based on this M3U file, it can be found in the tests/fixtures directory.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="Channel1" tvg-name="Channel 1" tvg-language="English" group-title="News",Channel 1
http://server:port/channel1

const m3u = `...`; // M3U file contents
const playlist: M3uPlaylist = parseM3U(m3u);
const channels: M3uChannel[] = playlist.channels;

Example output of `parseM3U()`

{
  channels: [
    {
      tvgId: 'Channel1',
      tvgName: 'Channel 1',
      tvgLanguage: 'English',
      groupTitle: 'News',
      duration: -1,
      name: 'Channel 1',
      url: 'http://server:port/channel1',
      extras: {
        'your-custom-attribute': 'your-custom-value'
      }
    },
  ],
  headers: {}
}

You can also generate an M3U file from a M3uPlaylist object:

const playlistObject: M3uPlaylist = {
  channels: [
    {
      tvgId: "Channel1",
      tvgName: "Channel 1",
      tvgLanguage: "English",
      groupTitle: "News",
      duration: -1,
      name: "Channel 1",
      url: "http://server:port/channel1",
      extras: {
        "your-custom-attribute": "your-custom-value",
      },
    },
  ],
  headers: {},
};
const m3u = writeM3U(playlistObject);
console.log(m3u); // #EXTM3U ...

Standard Attributes

This library supports all standard attributes for the #EXTINF and #EXTM3U tags. They will be parsed, camelCased and added as properties on the M3uChannel object.

Custom Attributes

This library supports any custom attributes you may have in your M3U file. They will be parsed and generated as an object under the extras property of the M3uChannel object.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="Channel1" tvg-name="Channel 1" tvg-language="English" group-title="News" custom-attribute="hello",Channel 1
http://server:port/channel1

const m3u = `...`; // M3U file contents
const playlist: M3uPlaylist = parseM3U(m3u);
const channel: M3uChannel = playlist.channels[0];
console.log(channel.extras); // { 'custom-attribute': 'hello' }

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⚡ Performance

This library has been optimized for parsing and generating M3U files quickly and efficiently. In my benchmarks, it performs better than iptv-playlist-parser, iptv-playlist-generator and m3u-parser-generator.

Benchmarks

Parsing M3U file (small.m3u8)

	Library	Ops/sec
🟢	@iptv/playlist	1,363,859
	m3u-parser-generator	607,573
🔴	iptv-playlist-parser	244,150

Writing M3U file (small.m3u8)

	Library	Ops/sec
🟢	@iptv/playlist	10,514,760
	iptv-playlist-generator	3,119,304
🔴	m3u-parser-generator	1,816,358

Time spent parsing different M3U files

	Channels	1	100	500	1,000	10,000	100,000	1,000,000
🟢	@iptv/playlist	~11 μs	~201 μs	~894 μs	~1.94 ms	~5.41 ms	~67 ms	~681 ms
	m3u-parser-generator	~17 μs	~226 μs	~1.23 ms	~3.66 ms	~17 ms	~153 ms	~1.68 s
🔴	iptv-playlist-parser	~116 μs	~513 μs	~2.61 ms	~5.17 ms	~57 ms	~385 ms	~3.94 s

^{I used nanobench to get the above times.}

^{These benchmarks were run on a 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max (10 cores) with 64 GB of RAM.}

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🎯 Future Goals

Worker Support

Even though it's fast and it won't block for long, this will block your main thread whilst it runs. I'd like to add support for running the parser in a worker so it doesn't block at all.

🚫 Non-Goals

HLS Parsing

This library is designed to parse and generate media player playlist files only. It is not designed to be a generic m3u parser or generator. It will not parse or generate HLS playlists.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Even better if they align with the future goals.

You'll need to be able to run the tests and benchmarks. To do so, you will need to run the ./create-fixtures.sh script in the tests/fixtures directory to generate the necessary fixture files.

To be accepted your PR must pass all tests and not negatively impact the benchmarks. Some commands to help you:

• pnpm run test - Run the vitest suite
• pnpm run benny - Run benchmarks with benny
• pnpm run benchmark - Run benchmarks with vitest
• pnpm run nanobench - Run additional timing benchmarks

This project uses Changesets to manage releases. For you, this just means your PR must come with an appropriate changeset file. If you're not sure how to do this, just ask and I'll be happy to help, or read the changesets documentation on adding a changeset.

📄 License & Credit

This library is licensed under the MIT License and is free to use in both open source and commercial projects.