Channels XMLTV Data - Empty Categories

Hello. Not sure if this is the place to ask this, and I didn't want to bump the old thread on this subject so I will just ask here.

It seems that over the past week or so something was changed in the way categories are included in the XMLTV formatted guide data provided by Channels (/devices/ANY/guide/xmltv). I wasn't paying attention before, but perhaps there are now many more categories included in the XMLTV data?

It seems, however, that there are empty category elements throughout. This causes guide data imports to fail in Jellyfin as the import process tries to write null values to the database.

It's obviously not the Channels Team's responsibility to implement workarounds for 3rd party applications, but I figured I would mention it if perhaps it was an easy fix on your end.

Thanks, as always, for even implementing the XMLTV output to begin with. It has been very useful.

Example:

<programme start="20220813140000 +0000" stop="20220813150000 +0000" channel="6.1">
<title>Good Morning America</title>
<desc>Andrea Lavinthal; David Nayfeld; Kelley Carter; Tory Johnson.</desc>
<category>Episode</category>
<category>Series</category>
<category/>
<category/>
<category>Talk</category>
<category>News</category>
<icon src="https://tmsimg.fancybits.co/assets/p184220_b_h9_an.jpg?w=720&h=540"/>
<series-id system="tms">184220</series-id>
<date>20220813</date>
<episode-num system="tms">EP039440320352</episode-num>
<episode-num system="onscreen">E258</episode-num>
<new/>
<credits>
<actor>Whit Johnson</actor>
<actor>Eva Pilgrim</actor>
<actor>Janai Norman</actor>
</credits>
<video>
<quality>HDTV</quality>
</video>
</programme>
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Thanks for the report. We’re looking into this and will get back to you.

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Try the latest prerelease

Wow. That was fast.

I can confirm this is fixed in version 2022.08.13.1759. There are no empty category elements and Jellyfin can once again import the metadata.

Thanks for the quick fix.

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