# Creating a channel

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/creating-a-channel/226775>\
**Category:** Dev/API Corner\
**Tags:** plugin-dev\
**Created:** [February 24, 2018, 8:22am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/creating-a-channel/226775 "2018-02-24T08:22:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ballz2k7](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/ballz2k7/32/17583_2.png) [@ballz2k7](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ballz2k7)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 8:22am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/creating-a-channel/226775/1 "2018-02-24T08:22:07Z")

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I have read all the guides but I’m not very good with python.  
What I want to do is create a channel that accesses a static url which returns a json/xml feed of items from my content database.

I currently have a content database that is constantly updated by 2 web spiders. I currently access this information for another project and it works well. All I want is a basic channel plugin which pulls data from a url. This will be a php script I will setup, it can be either json or xml, I can output any format required.

What I dont understand is how to use that data in a plugin. I have artwork, direct links to files, title of items etc all in my database.

I would need the plugin to read the data to build the menu/list of items. Category(Movie/TV), Title, Link, Art and then create a menu item for it. The plugin would not need to change once working as the database would be updated all the time.

If anyone could guide me it would be a great help. I have looked at other channel plugins (webisodes etc) but they are quite complex imo. 💫

thanks in advance

Ballz

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 8:07pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/creating-a-channel/226775/2 "2020-01-08T20:07:10Z")

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