MP3-CMS Project

MP3-CMS Introduction

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Even in 2008 managing digital music libraries remains an enduring problem in a distributed environment. Most of us have pcs or pc appliances in just about every room in the house. Making sure all of these devices all have access to the family's digital music library seems as simple as creating a file server. However as the features included in these standalone players increase, so do application footprints. Each application needs to expend time and cycles scanning the file server for music, updating it's database, and then there's the problem of synchronization or having to make sure that all these applications have the newest music in their databases. Ultimately it becomes quite a administrative task. What happens when you want to experiment with new platforms such as Macintosh, Linux, or UNIX? You have to learn new programs that all have different features. This type of thing is what locks a lot of people into specific platforms.

What is needed is a single interface, with common features that runs entirely from a web server. It needs to be intelligent. Specifically it should allow consumers to create playlists, rate tracks, comment on albums, generate smart playlists based on criteria such as star ratings, genres, newest tracks, and most importantly it should remember which tracks have been played and how often. Based on such analysis the system should recommend music and this system should be self-contained with as little administration as possible. If the users add or delete music from the server, the system should update itself appropriately.

The Mission

Quite simply, the goal of the project is to create the very best Web MP3 player there is. The users should not need to be necessarily technically saavy and the only thing we should require of the user is a Windows IIS server and some music. We'd like the solution to be database agnostic but more importantly we do NOT want to require a commercial database such as MS-SQL. The database should exist to persist our business logic, not the other way around.

Product Installation

The installation wiki steps through the installation. The steps typically consist of the following actions:

• Ensure your directory heirachy follows a convention where albums are in their own folder
• Use a tagging program to ensure that your ID3Tags are set correctly
• Ensure your album art is either embedded in each track or it exists as a file called folder.jpg in the album's folder
• Edit the configuration files to point to your server and SQLite data directory
• Configure the IIS Virtual Directory and Application Pool
• Configure Access Control Lists (ACL) for your music directory to allow the site access to it

Product Features

• FileSystemWatcher - A DataManagementHttpModule controls the FileSystemWatcher which monitors the watched directory for changes. It removes items from the database when they're deleted and adds new records as new files are added into the system.
• User Data - Entities such as UserAlbumData and UserTrackData allow for user defined data like Album and track star ratings as well as user comments and fan art
• Fan Art - Using an aspx script, GetFanArt.aspx, the system aggregates the album directory for .jpg files and displays them as fanart for the artist. Users need only copy over images to the artist directory to get them into the site.
• Track Lyrics - Using LyricWiki, the system will fetch lyrics for your tracks.
• Album Reviews - using a very primitive web scraper users can attempt to auto-fetch album reviews from the web
• Smart Playlists - As well as traditional playlists, the system supports various smart playlists such as songs by multiple genres, most played, newest, random, etc, etc.
• SQLite Engine - with release 1.5 and up, an MSSQL server is no longer needed. The system uses the persistence engine NHibernate with SQLite for data storage.
• iTunes Music Charts - the site aggregates various iTunes feeds so you can reference whats popular compared to what you have.
• AudioScrobbler Web Services - Though we have not yet integrated posting to audioscrobbler, you can get details about artists from the AS feeds

Basic Usage

A formal users manual has not yet been established but you can see from the following matrix the basic user interactions with the application

Home	Browse Artist
Browse Album	Browse Genre
Playlists	Search
Get Artist	Get Album
Get Track

 

The Solution Components

Credits

• Css Template: openwebdesigns.org
• mp3 player: Actionscript Player from Jeroen Wijering
• ID3Tags library: HundredMilesSoftware
• Rss library: RSS.NET
• Database: SQLite
• Nhibernate Domain Model & AJAX: Symon Rottem
• The solution: Neal Bailey

Code Resources

The Domain Model

Scanner & Queue Processor

Developer Install Instructions

1. Download the Source Code
2. Copy the sample_web.config file and paste it into the working directory as Web.Config
3. Create a new folder in ~/config called my_settings
4. Copy the configuration files in ~/config/default to ~/config/my_settings
5. Edit the AppSettings.config file. Set a scan path & turn the scanner on or off
6. Edit the NHibernate.config file. In the SQLite connection.connection_string property.

NOTE: This property must point to the fully qaulified path to your App_Data folder
7. Edit the web.config file and replace all instances of /config/default to /config/my_settings

Namespaces

• baileysoft.mp3: The root namespace (scanner, etc)
• baileysoft.mp3.audioscrobbler: AudioScrobbler Handlers
• baileysoft.mp3.Core.Data: NHibernate Handlers
• baileysoft.mp3.Core.Domain: Nibernate O/R PICO classes
• baileysoft.Utils.Web: Scrapers, Rss

Moving Forward

Due to personal obligations and lack of developer involvement the product is in danger of going extinct but I'm doing as much as I can by myself at this point. I have just about every feature I want and I'd say my original vision is about 90% completed. One of the last features I want are alternate skins and I'm researching an MVC model like MonoRail to potentially provide that capablity. In the meantime, I've worked out some test skins; one of which you can see below:

History

• Cleaned article
• Dumped the original article; updated for v1.5.0.3
• Updated article 03/07: entire code base re-written. Article depreciated
• Originally submitted 03-30-2007
• Online Demo is now up 04-01-2007
• Fixed broken links
• Updated article 06-14-2007

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source tree mjmeans 18:26 18 Nov '08   Okay, I went to the source tree and downloaded the trunk. Man that was tedious. File by file. There really ought to be a source zip download. Anyway, I also downloaded and installed into Visual Studio 2005 the ajax toolkit 1.0.10618 which is the same version referenced in the Web.config. Compilation however has a problem when validating the site. What am I doing wrong? I've edited out most of the long command lines and warnings, but here is relevant build log entries. ------ Rebuild All started: Project: baileysoft.mp3.Core, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------ Compile complete -- 0 errors, 7 warnings ------ Rebuild All started: Project: baileySoft.Utils.Web, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------ Compile complete -- 0 errors, 0 warnings ------ Rebuild All started: Project: baileysoft.mp3.Mp3Scanner, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------ Compile complete -- 0 errors, 0 warnings ------ Rebuild All started: Project: audioscrobbler, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------ Compile complete -- 0 errors, 0 warnings ------ Rebuild All started: Project: baileysoft.mp3.Mp3Scanner.Service, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------ Compile complete -- 0 errors, 0 warnings ------ Rebuild All started: Project: C:\...\site\, Configuration: Debug .NET ------ Validating Web Site Building directory '/site/App_WebReferences/'. Building directory '/site/App_Code/'. Building directory '/site/controls/'. (0): Build (web): Could not load file or assembly 'AjaxControlToolkit' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. C:\Documents and Settings\Mark\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\mp3-cms\site\App_Code\Mp3CmsMembershipProvider.cs(174,4): warning CS0168: The variable 'e' is declared but never used C:\Documents and Settings\Mark\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\mp3-cms\site\App_Code\Mp3CmsMembershipProvider.cs(32,35): warning CS0649: Field 'Mp3CmsMembershipProvider._passwordFormat' is never assigned to, and will always have its default value 0 Validation Complete ========== Rebuild All: 5 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 skipped ========== Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree mjmeans 18:59 18 Nov '08   Okay. Had to add AjaxControlToolkit.dll and .pdb and all the localization folders in the bin directory. I guess VS2005 doesn't add those when it builds the site. TrackList.ascx seemed to require <%@ Register Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" TagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" %> to eliminate another error. Now I'm getting the following error: Build (web): Unknown server tag 'asp:UpdatePanel' The funny thing is that the AjaxToolkit sample web site which also uses this tag, runs just fine. Am I missing a reference somewhere? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree mjmeans 19:09 18 Nov '08   Well, I was dumb... I blew up the Web.config file. Duh! Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree mjmeans 19:19 18 Nov '08   New problem... sigh. C:\...\mp3-cms\site\forms\gettrack.aspx.cs(60,9): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'org' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) C:\...\mp3-cms\site\forms\gettrack.aspx.cs(60,42): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'org' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) C:\...\mp3-cms\site\forms\gettrack.aspx.cs(63,13): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'org' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree mjmeans 19:24 18 Nov '08   ... and the problem was: The mime type of the cvs source code download links caused windows to save the server.wsdl and server.discomap files as server.xml and server.discomap.xml. Okay. That certainly would have been preventable if the source was in a zip file. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree - almost running mjmeans 20:13 18 Nov '08   Okay. When running in VS2005 IDE, I get an exception. Here is what is reported in scanner_log.txt. "NETWORK SERVICE" has been given full rights to c:\data. What else could it be? 2008-11-18 23:12:28,421 [9] ERROR NHibernate.Tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaExport [(null)] - Invalid ConnectionString format for parameter "C:\Documents and Settings\Mark\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\mp3-cms\site\App_Data\music.db3" System.ArgumentException: Invalid ConnectionString format for parameter "C:\Documents and Settings\Mark\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\mp3-cms\site\App_Data\music.db3" at System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteConnection.ParseConnectionString() at System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteConnection.Open() at NHibernate.Connection.DriverConnectionProvider.GetConnection() at NHibernate.Tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaExport.Execute(Boolean script, Boolean export, Boolean justDrop, Boolean format) Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree - GOT IT! mjmeans 21:11 18 Nov '08   Okay, Had to change the NHibernate.config connection string to specify the Data Source key=value pair, with the value in quotes... <property name="connection.connection_string"> Data Source="C:\Documents and Settings\Mark\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\mp3-cms\site\App_Data\music.db3";Version=3;Page Size=4096;Synchronous=Off </property> Cool. Now I'm gonna play with it and learn its behaviors. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree - GOT IT! thund3rstruck 4:23 19 Nov '08   Again, this is not the right place for these types of questions. Refer to the a href="http://www.nealosis.com/forum/">forums[^] There are very distinct instructions for developers in both the source tree and in the forums. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: source tree - GOT IT! mjmeans 21:06 19 Nov '08   I'm not interrested in joining any forums outside of codeproject. I participate in several projects here and posted a few myself. If the purpose of posting the project here was only to draw traffic to an outside site, then I think it was a mistake. To anyone else, message me if the author doesn't post a source download zip and I will email a zip of my working set to save you the tedium of downloading file by file in the aneamic svn sourceforge link originally provided. Warning: My version already has some changes. For one, I have moved the common dependencies in a solution level folder rather than multiple times in the project folders. I'm about to get rid of the currently useless login form. I am considering adding the built-in ASP authentication to eliminate the potential security hole created by allowing domain authorization; but, I have to research the implications to server performance first. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 1.00/5 (4 votes) Re: source tree - GOT IT! thund3rstruck 4:48 20 Nov '08   First of all, why would I be interested in drawing traffic to a site with no adverts, that I pay for personally out of my own pocket by the kilobyte. If you don't want to join the project then you're not going to get support because we're not going to answer the same questions over and over again at 3 different forums (codeproj, nealosis, sourceforge, etc). Secondly, if you cannot show respect for the 2 years of time and energy that it took for several developers, including myself, to build this solution then I DO NOT GRANT YOU permission to redistribute it. Cease further posting here or elsewhere regarding any changes you make to the cms. However, if you'd like to make changes (that everyone else can use and enjoy) then I suggest you join the development team and we'll bring you up to speed, otherwise you're changes are going to conflict with the active new features being implemented into version 1.6 and the mp3-cms team doesn't offer support for unsupported revisions. The source tree contains all the revisions and the working trunk. If you only want to work from of the main development tree then you only need to download from the trunk level, but you would not be able to create new releases, branches, or experimental paths. We won't EVER provide a zipped version of the trunk because that nullifies the source control bindings and makes it impossible for team collaboration. All of this, of course, only relates to development because the users receive a single, optimized compressed archive to deploy to their web servers. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 5.00/5 (1 vote) Re: source tree - GOT IT! CodeMasterMP 8:22 20 Nov '08   You are very rude and inconsiderate. Thund3rstruck has done an awesome job with this system. To come in like you did and blast his efforts is totally uncool. Thumbs down to your arrogance. CodeMasterMP Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 5.00/5 (1 vote) manage.aspx missing mjmeans 22:03 17 Nov '08   Hi, I can't get the user management settings to work due to the missing file 'manage.aspx'. I need to be able to edit the user database and change the administrator name and password. I am assuming this is handled in the missing manage.aspx. Mark Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: manage.aspx missing thund3rstruck 5:04 18 Nov '08   No, there hasn't been a manage.aspx page since the first release more than a year ago. The database settings are set in the NHibernate.Config file. Please refer to the project site [^]for support. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: manage.aspx missing mjmeans 14:34 18 Nov '08   Thanks. I'll check with the project site. But I dont want to change any of the database connection stuff in NHibernate. I just need user management. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: manage.aspx missing thund3rstruck 16:51 18 Nov '08   Yup, but that's not how it works. Since release 2.0 we only support SqLite and the location to the SqLite database files has to be set in NHibernate.config. As far as users go, we haven't implemented user management yet. Anyone can register for an account and there is no 'administrator' role established; we fall back on Windows NTFS permissions for that. But yea, feel free to post to the project site. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink FileSystemWatcher binaryDigit@@ 21:50 26 Sep '08   Hi, Can you elaborate a little on the use of the FileSyatemWatcher? Thanks Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: FileSystemWatcher thund3rstruck 19:03 27 Sep '08   Certainly. What would you like to know? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteException: Unable to open the database file mshehadeh 23:26 27 Mar '08   Hi, i got the following error,while trying to run the application By the way,what we need to install to let the sqllite work on my machine Regards mshehadeh Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteException: Unable to open the database file thund3rstruck 4:32 28 Mar '08   Refer to the website dedicated to this project. http://www.nealosis.com Follow the installation instructions on the wiki. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink MP3-CMS v1.5.0 thund3rstruck 15:57 7 Mar '08   The MP3-CMS Team is proud to present revision 1.5.0. This is the culmination of a LOT of time and effort and we're excited about what we've been able to accomplish in this pass. There is just too much to annotate all the changes here since there have been some 100+ commits to the subversion server since v1.2.0. Major Changes: * No more MS SQL Server: the backend runs entirly on SQLite (a free open source database) with NHibernate wrappers * No more Impersonation: The website now uses forms authentication * Scanner integration: The scanner is now built into the website entirely. It watches your music path and adds/removes records accordingly * User specific profiles: Each user now has data specific to his/her usage. This includes: + Users can rate tracks and those ratings only apply to them + Users have their own private playlists + Users can comment on albums * Online album review scraping: You can now scrape album reviews from online sources * Song Lyrics: Consume lyrics from lyricWiki.org and save them in the database * Usage Monitoring: The CMS now keeps track of the amount of times you play specific songs * New Smart Playlists: + Generate playlists based on your star ratings + Generate playlists based on the most played tracks in your collection * Simple setup: The only settings to enter are the path to your App_Data folder and the path to scan (watch) * Dynamic playlists/album art: Playlists are generated on the fly and not cached and album are is extracted directly from mp3 files if there is no folder.jpg file found .... And much, much more. Regards, Administrator Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 4.20/5 (2 votes) Song is not playing qumer101 3:59 5 Apr '07   hi When u select some track to play is show the WAITING ANIMATION and after that do nothing. What will be the reason ?? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Song is not playing thund3rstruck 4:23 5 Apr '07   Because as it says in the main page, it is the demo. This is a demonstration of how it will look and feel when you set it up on your server. THE DEMO WILL NOT PLAY MUSIC , obviously for legal reasons. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Song is not playing qumer101 5:42 5 Apr '07   "We just want to make sure that everything we use is open source and can be freely redistributed." So is there something in current solution that is not open source??? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: Song is not playing thund3rstruck 6:16 5 Apr '07   No, everything is open source. I cited all the additional components in the article and where to obtain the source & the original authors of those components. I made it a point in this project to only code myself what was absolutely necessary (the web UI, scanner, & database bits). Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Unable to run Scanner qumer101 2:57 5 Apr '07   hi I just configure the application according to help file but when I try to run the scanner it give message "Adding: abc.mp3" and after sometime all of sudden microsoft window msg came "Scanner has encounter a problem and need to close" Y is it so??? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink

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