[MyMusic] Add A-Z categories to Artist view

[matt melb]

Sorry guys, I know its a bad subject description. What I mean is that when in MyMusic if you use the Artist view it instantly shows a list of all artists which can get quite long if you have a decent music collection. It is possible to go to search and then search using starts with, and then the letter you want but this takes too many steps if done via remote.

My suggestion is to add another artists view where the first level viewed is the letters a-z (plus a number category). eg. If you wanted to look up Pearl Jam you woud select :
- Switch View
- Artists
- P
- Pearl Jam

I don't think that this can be done in the setup at all, but if I am wrong then please correct me!

Thanks
Matt

[mbuzina]

To my knowledge it can not be done in config. But if you basically "complain" about to many pages to scroll through, I would suggest to use the SMS Style Name entry. Just press the corrosponding characters on your remote to jump to the artist. So to go to Pearl Jam you just press 7 - 3 - 3 - 2 (and you are at pea which is probably already pearl jam)

[zag2me]

Meedio used to do this with an "Index" view, it worked really well for large music collections.

[HappyTalk]

Yer I've been looking into this also and wondering how best it would be implemented. Currently it takes about a minute to enter Music if left in 'Songs' View (40k tracks). I tried the sms remote way but it's just too awkward and time consuming. The feedback from the remote is not very responsive so it always ends up wrong, drove me crazy. For now I set the genre field in the database for each song to match the first letter of the artist which kinda helps, but in genera I am forced to just use the shares view to match my folder hierarchy, bypassing the database:-

I figured that the least intrusive and most powerful would be too add an extra column called 'index' to 'configuration|music|Music Views'. Then you could choose to subdivide Artist, Album,Songs. If used on an already indexed column it could further subdivide, as on songs even just the letter A would result in too many entries. A slightly easier implementation might be to just add an 'Index' field to the already existing 'Operat' column in music views, using the 'restrict' & 'limit' fields to determine how it operates.

Setting this index value to
0 = Leave as is with no subdivision
1 = 0, A, B, C..Z OR AA, AB, AC if used on an already subdivided Letter
2..999 => group based on that number of entries.


In Config I would then set up a view 'songs' thus:-
SELECTION INDEX
title 1
title 1
title 0

to get a hierarchy:-
A------------->AA
B ................ AB------------->Absolute Beginners
C ................ AC ................ Absolution


For 'Artists' view I would use
SELECTION INDEX
artist 1
artist 15
title 0

Which would Go 0, A,B,C..Z then would further subdivide if there were more than 15 artists in that letter :-

0
A------------->A Cer------------>A Certain Ratio
B ................ Alaba ................ A Guy Called Gerald
C ................ Arca

I reckon this would give most flexibility with minimal changes to the front end. I appreciate that from a coding viewpoint it would be a lot more complicated. I'd like to have a go (now I have my dev system all sorted out), BUT would not start until I was sure this concept is the most useable solution.



For now if you wanna use genre for artists A..Z as i did you can use this SQL to do it. Save to a file, open the music database in SQLite database browser by doing 'File|Import|Database from SQL', select the saved sql file and answer No to create new DB.

DROP  TABLE genre;
CREATE TABLE genre ( idGenre integer primary key, strGenre text);
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(1,'A');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(2,'B');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(3,'C');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(4,'D');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(5,'E');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(6,'F');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(7,'G');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(8,'H');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(9,'I');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(10,'J');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(11,'K');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(12,'L');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(13,'M');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(14,'N');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(15,'O');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(16,'P');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(17,'Q');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(18,'R');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(19,'S');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(20,'T');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(21,'U');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(22,'V');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(23,'W');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(24,'X');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(25,'Y');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(26,'Z');
INSERT INTO genre VALUES(27,'0');

UPDATE song SET idGenre = (SELECT SUBSTR(strArtist,1,1) FROM artist WHERE song.idArtist=artist.idArtist);
UPDATE song SET idGenre = '0' WHERE idGenre >= 0 AND idGenre <= 9;
UPDATE song SET idGenre = (SELECT idGenre FROM genre WHERE song.idGenre=genre.strGenre);

Then you can adjust your music views in config to insert genre above them, poor mans solution but for now it works. Needs to be re-run if you ever add new music.

[Nuisance]

Hello,

I've been testing MP to replace Meedio and I have to say nice job guys. There are only a few features that I crave. One is gapless which have been completed in the current csv's. Sweet!

And the other is INDEXING for music collections.

For all meedios cr*p its indexing was great. Please Please Please add this feature. Make MP useful for music lovers! You are SOOOOOOOO close.

[Hesse]

The SQL code is quite easy if the developers want to add the index view. I'm working on a generic media module similar to in meedio and I've got the views pretty much working, I've just been busy lately and haven't had time to work on it.

For a top level view, you could use:

strSQL = String.Format("SELECT substr({0}, 1, 1) AS first, {5} FROM {1} GROUP BY first ORDER BY first {4}", MPCurrentItem.strGroupBy, MPCurrentItem.strTable, MPCurrentItem.strSortBy, MPCurrentItem.strSortBy, MPCurrentItem.strSortAsc, MPCurrentItem.strImageColumn);

Then for the next level after the index, I use:

strSQL = String.Format("SELECT {0}, {7} FROM {1} WHERE substr({5}, 1, 1) LIKE '{6}' GROUP BY {2} ORDER BY {3} {4}", MPCurrentItem.strGroupBy, MPCurrentItem.strTable, MPCurrentItem.strSortBy, MPCurrentItem.strSortBy, MPCurrentItem.strSortAsc, MPPreviousItem.strSortBy, "{0}", MPCurrentItem.strImageColumn);

[tomtom21000]

met melb: this is quite easily to do with the latest addititon from hwahrmann. I´ve set it up exactly as you describe. No sql knowledge necessary.
you have to use the mp setup program -> music -> views and create a new view.
i am not at home, so i can´t tell you atm what to enter exactly.

Please note:
you eather need 0.2.0.0 + latest svn
or wait for the soon coming stable patch 0.2.0.5

tomtom

The other things might improve the possibilities further for the future
or if they seem too complicated for you to implement yourself.

[mbuzina]

This is now implemented in the SVNs. You have to modify your View (or add a new one) to do the following:
Selection Operat. Restrict Limit SortAsc
artist group 1 1 x
artist x
title

This will give you
A-Z View on the first level, then Artists, then Title. I use it for a "All Songs" view where the songs are first grouped by Name.

[Nuisance]

Thx mbuzina,

for visual people: