Opening a stream in VLC player

I've got several streams (TV channels) that I watch on my computer.

Instead of copying and pasting the links into VLC player, I would like to make a small program that would have all my streams, essentially buttons, and once I click the button for each channel, I can watch the stream in VLC Player.

As I was typing this, I realized I can also turn the streams into individual .xspf/.m3u playlists and then run them in VLC, by pressing a button in the program, of course.

So, my question is, how would I go about doing either of these things?

Edit: Actually, the 2nd method I know how to do. I can use the shell command to run the playlist in VLC, as I've set VLC as my default player for those types of files. At least I think it would work. Please do help me with it regardless.

Anyways, thanks in advance for your suggestions.