[Feature] Metadata sync from romM

[gnuranza]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Yes. It is very frustrating on large libraries to download all metadata again from scratch when you already have on romM side. Every time I need to rebuild or resync my playnite setup, I have to redownload everything, which is time-consuming and inefficient. It would be great to have an option to download metadata directly from romM, or to at least export/import it easily avoiding re downloading it again from internet metadata sources.

Describe the solution you'd like
I’d like the ability to export metadata from romM into playnite. Alternatively, having a way to cache or sync metadata directly with romM (instead of scraping again) would help a lot in managing large libraries.

Describe alternatives you've considered
N/A

Additional context
This feature would be especially useful for users with large ROM collections already scraped on romM app, multiple playnite devices, or frequent changes in romM library structure. Being able to share metadata easily would save time and bandwidth, and make playnite more powerful for serious collectors.

[carter-lilley]

Seconding this - spent the last several days downloading metadata on the server, only to realize I will be doing it again client side. I don't know if Playnite can present metadata in this fashion - but perhaps RomM additions can simply link their metadata to their server assets?

[focustense]

Oddly enough, I don't see any code in RomM.cs to download metadata. In fact, the code actually does populate metadata from RomM including description, cover and so on.

playnite-plugin/RomM.cs

Line 353 in 6813b26

games.Add(new GameMetadata

Maybe it's Playnite itself doing the forced metadata update. I found this little tidbit on the Playnite docs:

HasCustomizedGameImport: Specifies that library is in full control over the game import mechanism. In this case the library should implement ImportGames method instead of GetGames.

Playnite doesn't do a very good job of explaining the difference, what "full control" actually means, but possibly the RomM metadata would "stick" on import by switching to ImportGames?

[saitatter]

I am working on this feature currently.