preferred playlist format?

[David Blank-Edelman]

Howdy-

I was thinking a little bit about the requests for a "Browse by last
added" function. I understand why it is difficult to add; I think I
have an idea for a workaround that would work for me and perhaps other
people. I think it would be relatively easy to whip up a quick perl
script that would create and populate three separate playlists:

1) last_album_added
2) last_05albums_added
3) last_10_albums_added

This script could then be run once a day or on demand.

My questions for the developer-type people:

1) what's the recommended format for something like this? .m3u, the
slim-one (.pls? and is that format documented somewhere?), something
else?

2) does the server cache the list of playlists and maintain that
listing internally, or can I just write my three files to its playlist
directory and have them become instantly visible (with current
contents)?

3) I was planning on doing a naive filesystem crawl looking for
moddates. Would there be a more clever way to get the directory names
from the server's cache or is that too hard to be worth saving a few
dirops?

Thanks!

-- dNb

[Robert Moser]

David Blank-Edelman blurted out:
> My questions for the developer-type people:
>
> 1) what's the recommended format for something like this? .m3u, the
> slim-one (.pls? and is that format documented somewhere?), something else?

Don't blame us for .pls, that one was also developed and non-documented
by NullSoft for WinAmp.


> 2) does the server cache the list of playlists and maintain that listing
> internally, or can I just write my three files to its playlist directory
> and have them become instantly visible (with current contents)?

It caches the list, but would notice if the timestamp changed when you
navigate to the list.

[David N. Blank-Edelman]

Hi Robert-
Thanks for your response.

On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 06:04:32PM -0700, Robert Moser wrote:
> >1) what's the recommended format for something like this? .m3u, the
> >slim-one (.pls? and is that format documented somewhere?), something else?
>
> Don't blame us for .pls, that one was also developed and non-documented
> by NullSoft for WinAmp.

That says to me that I should go .m3u, will do.

> >2) does the server cache the list of playlists and maintain that listing
> >internally, or can I just write my three files to its playlist directory
> >and have them become instantly visible (with current contents)?
>
> It caches the list, but would notice if the timestamp changed when you
> navigate to the list.

Excellent. Will proceed apace in my spare time.

-- dNb