Web-based DAAP client

[dcorry]

I don’t know if this is relevant to anybody’s work, but I’ve been piecing together a web client on my own server. I’m doing it through PHP, Flash, and some crazy Javascript action. If anybody would like to look at my source, I could (clean it up first, of course, and) post it. I’ve set it up specifically for my system, so it’d also require a bunch of work to make it universal.

I use PHP to query the database directly, and create an object based on those results. It prints a table, and a Flash file on top. Whenever a song is doubleclicked, it sends a message to the Flash file to request a playlist – which is an XML file that PHP puts together. Songs are transcoded on the fly, and plays through Flash perfectly.

If anybody is interested, let me know.

[blamm]

This sounds good. Does it play wav? (e.g. stuff that has been transcoded from FLAC)

[dcorry]

@blamm wrote:

This sounds good. Does it play wav? (e.g. stuff that has been transcoded from FLAC)

I don’t know if it plays WAV directly, because I’ve been transcoding to MP3 to ease up on bandwith. I set this up so I can listen to stuff anywhere.

I store my stuff as flac, and use PHP’s passthru on this line:

flac -d -c –totally-silent | lame -f -b 128 – –

Which, of course, pipes the output of flac’s decode to lame, which sends it through PHP.

[Bo Mellberg]

I’d like a peek of your code. Upload it somewhere?

[Bo Mellberg]

Never mind. I started a project of my own.

I have created a flash (swf) application that can connect to any DAAP-server publically available. If you put it on your own server you can stream your music using its flash interface.

It is still in alpha phase, but if there is any interest I can share the swf-file for feedback. I would really like if someone took a beat at the visual appearance of this, it would be nice if it looked nice. As of now its even worse than the horrible java-client.

It starts a download of the mp3-stream and begins playback as soon as enough information is downloaded. When downloaded, inbetween songs, the net activity is zero.

[blamm]

I have no coding or design skills but would be very interested in taking a look at this for you from a requirements point of view. Having a good player in the web interface would be killer.

[Bo Mellberg]

Allrighty!! Let me just get the new listing functions to work then you can have a peek at it.

[Bo Mellberg]

OK. Here is the file:

http://files-upload.com/files/587266/FlashDAAP.swf

Please note that it is a very limited first version. A number of useful features is not yet implemented, such as “play/stop/next” buttons, progress bar, album graphics etc…

Click the artist, the album, the song to start streaming.

I’m streaming music to work from my server at home right now. 🙂

[blamm]

This is great.

Immediate observations.

Really quick and easy to use already
Doesnt work in firefox but does in IE.
Doesnt play Wavs (e.g. transcoded from FLAC, OGG etc). This is a biggie for me. Lots of my music is FLAC or OGG. A little research suggests Flash wont do this out of the box, but there are solutions.

Great job. Well done

[Bo Mellberg]

You’re absolutely right. Unless you transcode to mp3, Flash has no native way of playing those files. If you know a workaround I’d love to hear it.

I’m using it in Firefox so I can’t acknowledge your observation there. The “FlashDAAP.html” looks like this (totally Flash generated):

[Author]

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