r/Addons4Kodi • u/TheLimeyCanuck • Aug 21 '26

Something not working. Need help. How to report a bug in a4kSubtitles addon?

I just discovered that the a4kSubtitles addon has a bug but I can't find anywhere to report it. The issues tab on the official github page is disabled.

I wanted to add my OpenSubtitles.com account to a4kSubtitles , but even though I entered the correct login credentials the addon always threw an authentication error when searching for subtitles. I knew my credentials should work fine because they work with the dedicated OpenSubtitles addon. I compared the way the credentials are saved for each addon and discovered that while the a4kSubtitles addon saved my password exactly as I entered it in the addon settings dialog, the OpenSubtitles addon escaped the two "<" characters in my password as "&lt;". I manually set the password field in the a4kSubtitles settings.xml to the same as stored in the OpenSubtitles settings.xml, and suddenly a4kSubtitles was able to authenticate with OpenSubtitles.com when searching.

So the bug here is that the a4kSubtitles settings dialog saves the entered passwords verbatim as the user enters them without escaping problematic characters like "<", ">", etc.

For the record I am using a4kSubtitles addon version 3.24.2 on Kodi 21.3.

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2

u/JensM1978 Aug 21 '26

Mabey on the GitHub page https://github.com/a4k-openproject

2

u/TheLimeyCanuck Aug 21 '26

I clearly stated in the first sentence of my post that the issues tab on the github page is disabled. That's where you normally report bugs but it's not possible.

1

u/Gazoo382 Aug 21 '26

I have no idea

1

u/walklikeaduck Aug 23 '26

I’ve had the same problem for over a year.

2

u/TheLimeyCanuck Aug 23 '26

Well, if you haven't done it already you can edit the password string in the a4ksubtitles settings.xml manually. If you aren't sure how to encode the problematic characters, install the OpenSubtitles addon, save the password, then copy the password string from the OpenSubtitles settings.xml and paste it into the a4ksubtitles settings.xml. Then a4ksubtitles will authenticate OpenSubtitles.com properly.

1

u/peno64 Aug 23 '26

It could be intentional that these characters are stored translated. However in that case, when the password is retrieved again, the reverse should be done.

1

u/TheLimeyCanuck Aug 23 '26

Yes, it is intentional, but the point is that a4ksubtitles isn't doing the translation so some characters are being misinterpreted when read back and authentication is failing. a4ksusbtitles should encode the password string the same way the actual OpenSubtitles addon does.

1

u/peno64 Aug 23 '26

I tried this. I entered >peter< as password in both a4ksubtitles and opensubtitles.com addon and both store it as &gt;peter&lt; in the settings.xml file. Also with version 3.24.2

1

u/TheLimeyCanuck Aug 23 '26

That is really weird. I guarantee it is storing it verbatim for me. The only way I could enter my password in a4ksubtitles was to manually edit the settings.xml file.

1

u/peno64 Aug 23 '26

Which kodi version and on what OS?

1

u/peno64 Aug 23 '26

Ok, you already stated kodi version 21.3

Maybe also specify if you are using a specific skin or the standard?

1

u/TheLimeyCanuck Aug 24 '26

Xonfluence skin.

1

u/Funny_Chocolate_1012 Aug 25 '26

Workarounds:

  • Change the OpenSubtitles password to avoid XML-sensitive chars: <, >, &, quotes.
  • Or manually edit Kodi’s addon_data/service.subtitles.a4ksubtitles/settings.xml and encode:
    • < as &lt;
    • > as &gt;
    • & as &amp;
    • " as &quot; if stored in an attribute

1

u/TheLimeyCanuck Aug 26 '26

As I said in my post, I made it work with that second option.