050522 Nightly: XML Playlists

ok. Feedback as requested.

My setup:
– Linux FileServer with a Music folder containing all the .mp3’s.
– Windows XP machines running iTunes containing the master versions of all the .mp3’s.
– I run a windows program to synch Adds/Changes/Deletes to the FileServer on request.

Here is what I did:
1. Downloaded and built the latest nightly.

2. Copied the iTunes xml file with some test smart playlists into the root music folder on the server.

3. Ran mt-daapd, noticed that it upgraded the db from v4 to v5.

4. MusicServer appears in iTunes in Windows (hooray!)…the new Smart Playlists also appear (double hooray!).

Here is a .dump of the Playlists table:

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(1,'Library',1,4119,1,0,NULL,0);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(2,'Favorite',1,0,'rating > 79',0,NULL,0);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(3,'Favorite',1,0,'rating > 79',0,NULL,0);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(4,'Mash Up',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',12961);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(5,'My Top Rated',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',8286);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(6,'Recently Added',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',8520);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(7,'Recently Played',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',8458);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(8,'Song contains "the"',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',13109);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(9,'Top 25 Most Played',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',8430);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(10,'untitled playlist',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',12669);

INSERT INTO playlists VALUES(11,'untitled playlist 2',3,0,NULL,1116825457,'/mnt/hdd1/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml',12813);

(the last 2 playlists are manual ones)

Now we hit a snag…selecting any of the playlists associated with the server results in no files being displayed. I assume there must be something funky in my setup (i.e. it appears that if I manually add a playlist into the songs.db the files don’t appear either).

Thinking about it I’m personally not too worried about iTunes xml parsing (Everyone runs their own iTunes in this house and I would have to merge the playlists from the whole family to appear in the server).

I’m away on business this week so working out why the songs don’t appear will have to wait a while. Maybe I’ll play around and think about how to write a web page that would insert apple-style smart playlist records into the songs.db.

p.s. When the database gets Rescanned, do you reprocess the Playlists file (i.e. add in any new ones added to the db) or are they only processed on load?