Sync List

Overview

If you run more than one site with Dbmovies, for example one in English and one in Spanish, Sync List keeps their links in step. You add a link on one site, and it appears on the others on the same movie or episode. Edit it or delete it, and the change reaches them too.

Sync List is meant for your own network of sites: links that arrive are published as they come, with no review.

How it works

• A site that sends shares the links it publishes. Each new, edited or deleted link goes into a queue, and a background task sends the queue every minute, up to 100 links at a time.
• A site that receives finds the same title by its TMDb ID: the movie, or the TV show with the season and episode number. Then it adds the link to that title, updates it or deletes it.
• Titles the receiving site does not have are skipped. Sync List never imports titles. The skipped ones are listed in the activity log, so you can import them.
• Received links are never sent again. Two sites can send their links to each other without any link going back and forth.

Each link carries its address, type, language, quality, file size, password, subtitles, its premium mark and its status. Views, requests and reports stay on each site.

Before you start

• Both sites run Dbmovies 1.3.37 or newer.
• The sending site has an active license, and its scheduled tasks run on time. The queue is a background task. See Cron Jobs.
• The receiving site can be reached from the sending one, and its REST API is not blocked by a firewall or a security plugin.
• The clocks of both servers are right. Each request is valid for five minutes.

1. Set up the receiving site

1. On the site that will receive the links, go to Dbmovies › Settings › Links › Sync list.
2. Turn on Receive links.
3. Click Get a key. Copy the Sync secret key that appears.
4. Click Save.

Keep the key private: it lets other sites publish links on this one.

2. Set up the sending site

1. On the site that will send its links, go to Dbmovies › Settings › Links › Sync list.
2. Turn on Send links.
3. In Websites, click Add website and fill in:
   • Site URL: the address of the receiving site, such as https://es.yoursite.com;
   • Sync secret key: the key you copied from it;
   • Link types: which links it receives: Embed Link, Download and MP4 Link (all by default);
   • Premium links: whether it also receives the links that are only for premium members (on by default).
4. Click Save.
5. Click Test connection. Each website shows Connected with its name and version, or the reason it failed.
6. Click Send all links to send the links you already have. This step is only needed once per website: from then on, every change is sent on its own.

Add one website for each site that should receive the links of this one.

[SCREENSHOT_HERE: Dbmovies › Settings › Links › Sync list on the sending site, with Send links on, a website and the Test connection, Send all links and Retry failed buttons]

What is sent and when

Changes are sent on their own, about a minute after they happen:

• adding, editing or deleting a link, from the editor or from Dbmovies › Links;
• importing links from a spreadsheet;
• deleting a movie or an episode, which deletes its links on the receiving sites too;
• replacing a domain with Sources domain exchanger.

Only links of published movies and episodes are sent. A link that stops meeting what a website receives, for example because it became premium and that website does not receive premium links, is deleted on that website.

To send the links of one title right away, open it in the editor and click Send links to sync list in its Links box. The button only appears when Send links is on.

On the receiving site

Received links work like any other link: your visitors see them in the list of links of the title.

• In Dbmovies › Links, the User column shows where each received link came from, such as From en.yoursite.com. Use the All origins filter to see only the links of this site or only the received ones.
• Changes come from the sending site. If you edit a received link here, the next change on the sending site overwrites it. To change it for good, change it on the sending site.

[SCREENSHOT_HERE: Dbmovies › Links on the receiving site, filtered by Received (Sync List), with From en.yoursite.com in the User column]

Sending in both directions

A site can send and receive at the same time. To keep two sites in step both ways:

• set up each one as a receiving site, with its own key;
• add each one to the Websites of the other.

Received links are never sent again, so each link stays with the site that created it.

Activity and problems

The Activity section of Sync list shows the queue and the last events:

• Queue: the links waiting to be sent, and the ones that failed.
• To a website: what that website did with a batch. It lists links created, updated and deleted, titles not found, and errors.
• From a website: what this site did with the links it received.

Tools › Site Health › Dbmovies also shows whether this site sends and receives, and the state of its queue.

[SCREENSHOT_HERE: The Activity section of Sync list, with the queue and a few sent and received events]

If a website does not answer, its links stay in the queue and are retried, waiting longer each time, up to twelve hours. After eight attempts they are marked as failed. When the problem is fixed, click Retry failed.

Security

• Every batch is signed with the key of the receiving site. The key itself never travels, and a signature older than five minutes is rejected.
• Each receiving site accepts up to 120 batches per minute from the same site.
• To stop a site from sending to this one, click Change key in Sync list and save. Give the new key only to the sites you trust.