rolabesti 0.3.1

Command-line application to manage a music collection of mp3 tracks

• Motivation

• Description

• Requirements

• Installation

• Configuration

• Usage

Motivation

The main motivation is to answer a question that music fans, DJs, bartenders and melomaniacs with tons of audio files may face: ‘What music do I play?’ That is, ‘what genre do I want now?’ or ‘which random songs can fill up the time I am able to listen?’ are the type of questions that rolabesti replies.

Description

rolabesti is an command-line application to manage a music library, performing the following actions on mp3 files: loading to database, parsing, searching, playing, enqueueing, copying, and tagging.

Requirements

• Linux environment.

• Python 3.3+. A virtual environment is recommended.

• MongoDB instance.

• vlc player. When selecting shell player, only the libvlc library is required.

Installation

$ pip install rolabesti

Configuration

The default settings can be overriden in ~/.config/rolabesti/rolabesti.conf. This configuration file has INI syntax with a unique section named [rolabesti].

• MUSIC_DIR: path where the mp3 files are located, default is ~/Music.

• MAX_TRACK_LENGTH: maximum track length in minutes, corresponding to the MAX argument, default is 10.

• MIN_TRACK_LENGTH: minimum track length in minutes, corresponding to the MIN argument, default is 0.

• MAX_TRACKLIST_LENGTH: maximum tracklist length in minutes, corresponding to the MAX_TRACKLIST_LENGTH argument; 0 denotes no tracklist length limit, default is 60.

• SORTING: tracklist sorting, corresponding to the SORTING argument; choices are asc (ascending), desc (descending) and random, default is random.

• PLAYER: player to play and enqueue tracks, corresponding to the PLAYER argument; choices are shell (play tracks directly in the shell) and vlc (play tracks in the vlc player, opening it if necessary), default is vlc.

• OVERLAP_LENGTH: when selecting shell player, overlap length in seconds between two consecutive tracks, corresponding to the OVERLAP_LENGTH argument; minimum is 0, maximum is 30, default is 3.

• MONGO_HOST: MongoDB host, default is localhost.

• MONGO_PORT: MongoDB port, default is 27017.

• MONGO_DBNAME: MongoDB database name, default is rolabesti.

• MONGO_COLNAME: MongoDB collection name, default is tracks.

Before running the application, locating the mp3 files in MUSIC_DIR is enough. Besides, the searching results become more accurate when the path to the track has one of these patterns. <place>, <genre>, <artist>, <album>, <side> and <title> are placeholders of any length and character. The square brackets denote optional.

• MUSIC_DIR/Places/<place>/Genres/<genre>/Albums/<album>/[<side>/]<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Places/<place>/Genres/<genre>/<artist>/<album>/[<side>/]<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Places/<place>/Genres/<genre>/<artist>/<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Places/<place>/Albums/<album>/[<side>/]<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Places/<place>/<artist>/<album>/[<side>/]<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Places/<place>/<artist>/<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Genres/<genre>/Albums/<album>/[<side>/]<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Genres/<genre>/<artist>/<album>/[<side>/]<title>.mp3

• MUSIC_DIR/Genres/<genre>/<artist>/<title>.mp3

The database is loaded with tracks metadata running the load subcommand.

$ rolabesti load

When selecting vlc player, unique running instance configuration is recommended.

• Tools/Preferences/Interface/Playlist and Instances

  • Allow only one instance: checked

  • Enqueue items into playlist in one instance mode: checked

Usage

$ rolabesti [-h] SUBCOMMAND [ARGUMENTS]

You can check the arguments for each subcommand with:

$ rolabesti SUBCOMMAND -h

Let’s see a couple of examples.

To play two hours of rock music, limiting the track length to 10 minutes, with random sorting:

$ rolabesti play -g rock -l 120 --max 10 -s random

To play an hour of rap music from Iceland, skipping intro and outro tracks (less than 2 minutes length), with ascending sorting:

$ rolabesti play -g rap -l 60 -p Iceland --min 2 -s asc