[iOS] Exiting video player turns episode picker to placeholder

[samglt]

Describe the bug

Playing an episode of a series from the series view and then exiting causes the episode selector to change to a placeholder view.

This started happening after #1589 which refreshes the SeriesItemViewModel after exiting the player. I see that the recordings in the PR don't show this, but in my simulator and on my own devices this happens every time.

If I add a sleep of a few hundred ms in the SeriesItemViewModel's refresh method here between when the seasons are cleared and re-added then this stops happening. I see that the recordings in the PR have a significant lag before the episode selector reappears after exiting the player, so I think this is why it's not happening for everyone.

After the series VM is refreshed, all the season VMs are in initial state (so the episode selector shows a placeholder) and if there's enough of a delay the SeriesEpisodeSelector view will notice and refresh the current season, but if it's too fast nothing happens and it stays in initial.

Adding the following to SeriesEpisodeSelector does fix this problem, but it also makes the selector flash and lose its place (see second clip).

.onChange(of: selectionViewModel?.state) { _ in
    guard let selectionViewModel else { return }

    if selectionViewModel.state == .initial {
        selectionViewModel.send(.refresh)
    }
}

Issue

refresh.mov

Partial Fix

refresh2.mov

Application version

main

Where did you install the app from?

None

Device information

Simulator, iPhone 11, others

OS version

18.5

Jellyfin server version

10.10.6

[JPKribs]

I'm occasionally able to recreate this but it's not very consistent for me. TBH, that PR was a bit of a stopgap (See the TODOs in the VideoPlayerManager). The primary goal of that PR ended up being a cleanup of ItemViewModel and it's children to clean up usage of some now-deprecated components. I originally set out with the goal of a broader refresh on playback change but that ends up being a much larger endeavor. Additionally, 1581 will likely wipe anything that we have right now.

I believe the route we need to take moving forward is something like this:

import Factory
import JellyfinAPI

extension BaseItemDto {

    mutating func refresh() async throws {

        @Injected(\.currentUserSession)
        var userSession

        guard let itemID = id, let userSession else {
            return
        }
        let request = Paths.getItem(itemID: itemID, userID: userSession.user.id)
        let response = try await userSession.client.send(request)
        self = response.value
    }

    mutating func getUserData() async throws {

        @Injected(\.currentUserSession)
        var userSession

        guard let itemID = id, let userSession else {
            return
        }
        let request = Paths.getItemUserData(itemID: itemID, userID: userSession.user.id)
        let response = try await userSession.client.send(request)
        userData = response.value
    }
}

LePips goes into detail on that PR here: #1589 (comment)

The gist of it is that right now we are calling a full refresh of the item whenever there is a change. The reality is that we don't really care about the full item (posters, names, actors, etc.), only the UserData. We should only refresh the full item when the metadata changes from the ItemEditorView or the ItemView is forcibly refreshed (either pulled from top or re-entered).

I haven't fully pieced it together since 1581 comes first and has updates to this process itself. The main part of what I am saying/showing above is that we'd want to change all current backgroundRefresh instances with just userData updates. This should be easy to enable on a per-BaseItemDto level but overall this is going to eventually require some rework to the ItemViewModels & PagingItemViewModels. This might even require some further separation between refresh, background refresh, and initial load.

For now, it might just make more sense to remove VideoPlayerManager's changes on lines 242-244 and go back to how this was prior where the seasons don't update on end of playback. Then, re-address this post-1581.

[samglt]

Ok, that all makes sense. I didn't submit a PR since it didn't seem like a real fix.

Testing again, this only doesn't happen on a device running the iOS 26 beta which I assume is because it's slow. However since there's no issue reports from anyone on Testflight for the past few weeks maybe I'm just unlucky

[JPKribs]

Haha cursed to have fast devices!

But no worries on the PR! I think we're just on a bit of a holding pattern until #1581.

There's another component of this as well where we should get UserData updates from a WebSocket as well to capture updates made from other devices but that requires cleaning up and finalizing something like: jellyfin/jellyfin-sdk-swift#46

Just a lot of moving parts unfortunately.

This Issue is definitely valid though. I've left myself a note to revisit after #1581. That PR should be ready by our final 1.4 release so for now this should just be relegated to TestFlight. Not ideal but less urgent.

If we're waiting on #1581 longer, I'm also game to just remove/comment those 3 lines and close that out.