Automatic M3U playlists

[OxygenCobalt]

Self-explanatory. Auxio automatically indexes M3U files and treats them like any other playlist, with edits mapping to a playlist file update.

I will need:

• Another broad refactor for musikr to introduce M3U parsing into the loader.
• UI upgrades to handle the longer time it takes to write file edits.
• New heuristics or settings to handle the many path conventions in M3U and ensure writes follow the same conventions.

Considering:

• A way to convert M3U playlists to database playlists. I don't see this happening right now since it requires some annoying semantic details on how to avoid mixing up the M3U and DB playlists.

[dazu89]

To my knowledge, there are only few other music player for Android that reliably implement this feature (e.g. Phonograph Plus, Poweramp)!

[OxygenCobalt]

To my knowledge, there is no other music player for Android that reliably implements this feature!

Poweramp does, but it's strangely delayed. Not sure if this is a bad sign or not.

[chocmake]

This was a nice feature of Blackberry 10, where one could just sync M3U created from one's preferred music player to the root music dir of the phone and the playlist would appear/be updated in the phone's music app. The filename would become the playlist name.

(Noted just as another example of a prior implementation)

[KraXen72]

this would be absolutely huge. hope it gets implemented!

[VoxelPrismatic]

A way to convert M3U playlists to database playlists. I don't see this happening right now since it requires some annoying semantic details on how to avoid mixing up the M3U and DB playlists.

Wdym?

[OxygenCobalt]

Wdym?

i.e @VoxelPrismatic Take a M3U playlist and turn it into an in-app playlist, and vice versa. It's difficult since I have to then "hide" the M3U file you converted from the music loader, i.e more configuration details I have to track.

[VoxelPrismatic]

Oh, that's far too complex.

Just make an M3U column in the DB playlist which points to a file. If the playlist is updated, update the file too. When you export the playlist, update the M3U column to point to the new file.

This way, when you discover a new M3U playlist, you just use the existing import feature and update the M3U column accordingly.

[OxygenCobalt]

A good rule of software is not to duplicate state @VoxelPrismatic, and given that Auxio has an excessive amount of internal state I'm not very keen on having to synchronize an M3U file and a DB file.

M3U files are going to be set up as to be functionally indisinguishable to a database playlist. This way the rest of the code doesn't actually have to consider what playlists they are editing.

The issue comes up when a user might want to take one of their M3U's, turn it into an in-app playlist that is no longer synchronized to the M3U, or vice versa, turn their in-app playlist into an M3U that is synchronized. This requires me to have to actually consider the different types of playlists and selectively hide/show them depending on what the user did, so it's a little annoying. That's all.