[Blog] Music Section gets some TLC (1 Viewer)

[jameson_uk]

Re: Re : Music Section gets some TLC

With some skins (like streamedmp) you get the last added albums into the basic home screen. Is there a way (like movingpictures) to sort albums by last added date into the music database?

In the list on the home page or in the database views? Not sure about the home page stuff as that is all done outside of the music plugin. You can create a database view of albums sorted by date though

 

[jameson_uk]

@jameson_uk
I've a question regarding the music library. I'm currently playing with some ASP.Net stuff and thought it would be nice to look at the media databases of MP as a source of information... While the most databases are easy to use the music database layout is not that nice Will there be any change in the upcoming 1.x releases?

Unlikely to be any changes as the really messy code that has built up over the years depends on it and I really don't fancy trying to rewrite the music view handler from scratch.

That said the database is kind of like the that out of necessity The main issue is that you can have multiple values stored in artist/album artist/composer/genres.... tables. This multi-value / single field thing does not really agree with relational theory

Not sure what changes you would want to see? The Tracks table contains all your tracks and most of the info about those tracks. Multi-artist fields are stored in their own tables as unique values. This is meant to make it easier to get say an A-Z listing of artists because we need to store multiple values in one field in the tracks tables you have

| artist a | artist b |

which makes that sort of query pretty difficult

 

[Mike Lowrey]

Not sure what changes you would want to see?

Well a "relational theory" compatible layout would be great My problem is mainly the massive amount of work arounds to (as an example) simply get the artist's albums.

Another thing is why are two of this characters '|' in each strAlbumArtist row?

 

[jameson_uk]

Not sure what changes you would want to see?

Well a "relational theory" compatible layout would be great My problem is mainly the massive amount of work arounds

What particular workaround? Below might explain...

to (as an example) simply get the artist's albums.
Another thing is why are two of this characters '|' in each strAlbumArtist row?

The issue is the many to many relationship between tracks and album artists.

The | characters are to separate different values so to get a list of albums for an album artist you use

Select distinct strAlbumName from Tracks where strAlbumArtist like '%| artist |%'

so if you have say the collaboration between Linkin Park and Jay-Z the album artist field could be | Linkin Park | Jay-Z | and hence the above query for both artists will still return the album.

An intersection table between Tracks and the multi-value tables would be much better database design but it would need large amount of code changes (there are about 1000 lines in MusicViewHandler.cs that would need updating

 

[Mike Lowrey]

ah thanks that explains a lot.... Haven't thought about many to many relationship because normally i take mixed album artists as separate artist

Regarding the amount of work it was what i have suspected cause this also explains why it's so complex to expand the the filter options(like we've already discussed in the music section thread)

 

[jameson_uk]

ah thanks that explains a lot.... Haven't thought about many to many relationship because normally i take mixed album artists as separate artist

Me too... for album artist, if it is a compilation I set this to "Various Artists". I sometimes do use multiple artists sometimes but normally can't be bothered...

[quorte]Regarding the amount of work it was what i have suspected cause this also explains why it's so complex to expand the the filter options(like we've already discussed in the music section thread)[/QUOTE]
Some filters have been updated a bit so some things that did not work before will do now but there is not a massive change here.

Even if the database has a nicer structure (this would have to be similar to MediaMonkey http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/images/MM3DBStructure.PNG) then this can actualy make querying the data more complicated. eg. say you want a list of albums for a particular genre with all artists beginning with A you actually have to join together six tables and when you combine this the dynamic view stuff it can get pretty messy and confusing.

I want to improve setting up and configuring of views for 1.3 but I don't plan on changing the database structure (unless there is a good reason to)

 

[TiboTv]

Re : Re: Re : Music Section gets some TLC

In the list on the home page or in the database views? Not sure about the home page stuff as that is all done outside of the music plugin. You can create a database view of albums sorted by date though

Yes it's listed in home page by the skin (in basichome page exactly). I know that we can create a view of albums sorted by date but it's sorted by publishing date of the album (the information is coming from IDtag) and not by database adding date (when a database refresh or scan results of adding files to the database)

 

[jameson_uk]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Music Section gets some TLC

Yes it's listed in home page by the skin (in basichome page exactly).

If you want to change the sort here the plugin needs to sort that (I get a bit lost as to whether this is fanart handler, infoservice or what now...)

I know that we can create a view of albums sorted by date but it's sorted by publishing date of the album (the information is coming from IDtag) and not by database adding date (when a database refresh or scan results of adding files to the database)

There are two sorts, one is year and one is date (which can now be set as last-modified date, created date or first date MP found out about the file).

I have a feeling that the year and date sorts were there previously (kind of lost track of whether this was changed for 1.2 or whether that was there already... I certainly have an albums by age view which lists all albums in order of created date (in the database)

 

[TiboTv]

Re : Re: Re : Music Section gets some TLC

In the list on the home page or in the database views? Not sure about the home page stuff as that is all done outside of the music plugin. You can create a database view of albums sorted by date though

Yes it's listed in home page by the skin (in basichome page exactly). I know that we can create a view of albums sorted by date but it's sorted by publishing date of the album (the information is coming from IDtag) and not by database adding date (when a database refresh or scan results of adding files to the database)

I've made some tests this evening... and by creating a view with parameter "recently added", "list view", sort by "date" I can get the list of last added song sorted by adding date.
I don't find a way to make it by album... I think it isn't possible and this job is done by a plugin (pretty sure that it's done by InfoService)

I've got an other remark concerning music views : I don't find a way to set a default view on MP starting. eg : if you set "album" view in MP and then restart it, the default view stays on "album" and not on "artist".
It seems that there's no way into MP Configuration to set the "default startup view" for music section.

Could you confirm it? If it's true, it could be a small but good improvement

 

[jameson_uk]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Music Section gets some TLC

I've made some tests this evening... and by creating a view with parameter "recently added", "list view", sort by "date" I can get the list of last added song sorted by adding date.
I don't find a way to make it by album... I think it isn't possible and this job is done by a plugin (pretty sure that it's done by InfoService)

The infoservice thing only changes what you can see on the home page and is not related with the music plugin.

To create an album by date view you can create a view like this
album | sort by date desc
tracks | sort by track

I've got an other remark concerning music views : I don't find a way to set a default view on MP starting. eg : if you set "album" view in MP and then restart it, the default view stays on "album" and not on "artist".
It seems that there's no way into MP Configuration to set the "default startup view" for music section.

Could you confirm it? If it's true, it could be a small but good improvement

In 1.2 you can use parameters to open up music plugin. This means that (dependent on skin) you can set a link to open music at the same view each time.