Xiaomi Android TV Metro

The Metro style UI is built using a hierarchical structure of two primary elements: Albums and Display Items.

• Album: A container that can hold multiple other Albums or Display Items. The main page of the application is also defined as an Album.
• Display Item: The leaf nodes of the structure, representing specific content such as a video, game, app, or music. You can derive specific detail items from these display items.

Hierarchy Model:

                             Album
                               |
             __________________|___________________
             |    ...  |           |       ...    |
           Album      Album    Display Item     Display Item

To integrate the Android Metro library into your application, you must follow these steps:

1. Inherit from MainActivity.
2. Implement a Tabs Loader (using GenericSubjectLoader) to handle the loading of Albums.

For a concrete implementation reference, examine the TVMetroSample application included in the repository.

Key components provided by the library:

• RecommendCardView: A specialized Card view for Metro layouts.
• GenericSubjectLoader: A loader designed for Albums (note that Tabs are treated as instances of an Album).

To support the Metro UI, your server must provide data following the defined API style and JSON structures.

API Endpoint Pattern

The general pattern for requesting resources is: http://host/v1/ns/type/?id=res_id

• ns: Namespace (resource type).
• type: item or item list.
• id: Resource ID from the backend system.

Specific Endpoint Examples

• Item List: http://host/game(video/app)/item?id=12346
• Album: http://host/game(video/app)/album?id=6464
• Category: http://host/game(video/app)/category?id=123456 (Note: Categories and Albums are conceptually similar).

Implementation Steps

1. Define your Home Data structure (the top-level Album containing tabs).
2. Implement your Details/List APIs to return specific items or albums based on the requested IDs.

Resources follow a universal URL pattern: /{NS}/{Type}?id={ID}.

Examples:

• /game/album?id=album1_id: A specific game album in GameCenter.
• /game/album?id=recommand: The GameCenter home page content.
• /game/album?id=action: The album containing all 'action' category games.
• /game/item?id=game1_id: Details for a single game in GameCenter.

All API requests must include the following parameters passed as HTTP query parameters:

• locale: Locale code (e.g., zh_CN).
• res: Resolution (hd720 | hd1080 | hd2160).
• device: Device type.
• device_id: Device ID (typically the MD5 hash of the device MAC address).
• ns_key: The Key for the Namespace.
• opaque: A URL signature calculated using the ns_key and the URI/parameters.

The top-level Home data is an object containing an array of albums (tabs). Each album entry includes its items, images, name, ID, type, and namespace.

{
    "data": [
        {
            "items": [display items],
            "images": {},
            "name": "TAB 1",
            "id": "recommend",
            "type": "album",
            "ns": "video"
        },
        {
            "items": [display item],
            "images": {},
            "name": "TAB 2",
            "id": "recommend",
            "type": "album",
            "ns": "video"
        }
    ]
}

An Album contains a collection of items (which can be Display Items or other Albums) and metadata for the container.

{
    "data": [
        {
            "items": [display items],
            "images": { },
            "name":"game tab name",
            "times": {
                "updated": 0,
                "created": 0
            },
            "_ui": {
                "type": "metro"
            },
            "id": "recommend",
            "type": "album",
            "ns": "game"
        }
    ],
    "preload": {
        "images": []
    },
    "update_time": 0
}

The following endpoints are available for retrieving content:

• GET /1/{ns}/category?id={id}&sort={sort}&page={page}&filter=...: Returns an {AlbumList} for a specific category. Note that page is 1-based (default 1) and sort does not apply to non-category albums.
• GET /1/{ns}/album?id={id}: Returns an {AlbumList} for a specific album.
• GET /1/{ns}/search?q=word&category=c1/c2: Performs a search. Returns an {AlbumList}.
• GET /1/{ns}/home: Returns the home page content as an {AlbumList}.
• GET /1/{ns}/item?id={id}: Returns an {ItemList} containing detailed information for a single item.
• GET /1/{ns}/download?item={id}: (Status: TBD) Initiates a download.

To use the Client class, you must first call init(Context context). This method populates static fields containing device information, system versions, and installation metadata. It detects if the current application is a system app and retrieves the product code and SDK version.

Client.init(context);