test mp3

[=DBA=Ronin]

[BuddhaMan]

Since that's country music, I can't really call that a "good" test...but I can see the player.

[=DBA=Ronin]

In regards to this mp3 player, maybe you can help me out a bit.

This thing works like so...

I have the application(a .swf) in a folder on my web server.
In that same folder, I have two xml files, one is a config, the other is the playlist
All songs are in a subfolder of the afore mentioned folder.

The embed source that displays the player in a web page calls the swf using variables in the url to call the config and playlist xml's.

My web server has a mssql database and can host .asp pages.

What I want to do, is build an interface that will allow users to do the following:

Log into the set of pages with a registered account
Based on their username, query the database which will contain the filename, song name, and artist of all of their existing songs and display these in a table.
Using a basic form, allow them to browse their computer for an mp3 they wish to upload.
Parse the file path to get the filename, and later remove the ".mp3", this will be used for the filename and will auto fill another form field with it (editable so they can change it as they so wish).
Another field to enter the artist's name.

After the form is filled out, submit it to the database and insert a new record, simultaneously, recreate the playlist.xml file with the new addition, then upload that and the new song to the ftp site.

I guess I am not looking for how to do all of this, a lot of it I have figured out in my mind already. But I have a couple of areas I am not so sure are possible. Basically, do you know if ftp transfers are possible from an .asp page. If so how could I get a temporary playlist.xml file created so that it can upload it? At work I have a form that creates txt files on the web server based on a form for creating custom sql script instructions, but I am not sure if I can do this on my server, nor am I sure if it can be done for xml.


Sheesh...as I go back and read what I just posted, it sounds a lot more convoluted than I thought. If you got any ideas, let me know. If not, I understand!!

[CDSaint]

i like that i can click on the songs from the list you have there. i liked that song by Frou Frou - Breathe in. thanks for that introduction to that kind of music i appreciated listening to it.

[=DBA=Ronin]

Thats Shanks's playlist. He is big into that kind of music.

[CDSaint]

lol ok. thanks shanks!

[BuddhaMan]

I quit reading what you typed Steve. Sounds too complicated for me after sentence 3.

What you need to do is break down what you want to do into small pieces and solve each one.

You never stated what you want the webpage to do (the end result), only the way you want to do it.

Looks like you want a system where registered users can upload songs to a private file area and then be able to play them from anywhere on the internet.

There are user registration systems "out there" as open source, along with file upload systems. Once a user registers, it creates a unique directory on the server with their username. The user can then upload mp3s to this folder with the file upload system. Another piece would get the filename and strip off the file extension OR use the id3 tag info to get both the filename and artist and then put that in the xml file.

In your solution above, what's the point of this database? To just hold the song/artist info to be displayed on the webpage? You can do that with xml and then you'll only need to store the info in the playlist xml for the player and then you display it also so the info is stored in only one place. Learning XML and XSLT is a steep curve, but I did it and it took an epiphany moment to "get it" and then I made a webpage using only XML and XSLT that looks like this:

[=DBA=Ronin]

Yeah, the ultimate goal here is to allow users to login and be directed to a page that will both display their current playlist, and give them the option to upload new songs to their dedicated folder on my webserver. After the upload, I want to be able to have thier playlist.xml file automatically updated to include any new uploads.

I already have a raw user registration form that I built last night (need to figure out how to encrypt the p/w's in the db though). After they authenticate, they are redirected to the file uploader. The file uploader simply builds the remote directory path of where to upload to based on who is logged in. I got the uploader working, along with it determining the appropriate user path based on logon. I still need to work on a way to have a user folder created on initial user registration, which shouldn't be too hard, but just haven't gotten to that yet.

I figure what I will probablly do is share just one instance of the mp3 player, and have each user have a distinctly named config and playlist file, based on their usernames. That way I don't have to have a copy of the mp3 player for each user, just individual xml's that get defined in the call from wherever they are embeding the player.

What I need now is a function to update the playlist. If you can figure something out based strictly on xml that would be super! I emailed a reply back to you, including an example playlist.

[=DBA=Ronin]

Ok, I played with this some more tonight after work. Thus far, I am at the point where after a user registers, the first time they upload a song, it creates the necessary file structure on the server based on their first name. If they don't upload anything after they register, the next time they log in and attempt to upload, it will still create the file structure if not in place. So, that part is all worked out now. Still need to work on encrypting the passwords though.

So, what I would like to have this thing do now, is somehow get that playlist to generate and update whenever a song is uploaded. I can call URLs after an upload that could call a web page and it can then do its thing and generate or update the playlist via your xml magic. Better yet would be to call a web form after an upload and allow the user to edit the xml settings and then after submit have the playlist update with both their settings, and the default settings needed to properly fomat the playlist. doable?

Also, one thing I would like to do, is give users the ability to edit the existing playlist.xml via a web form. This would have to incorporate some xml magic too I reckon. It would need to allow users to update certain variables, or delete a listing altogether. You think this is feasible?

I was going to post links to the stuff that is up and running now in case you wanted to see it in action, but I need to redo some of the scripting as anyone could potentially get my ftp account info and I don't want to make that address public until I move that to a secure script call. Let me know if you want to try it out and I will pm or email the links.

[=DBA=Ronin]

So, I spent pretty much all of my freetime playing with this shit this weekend.

I ended up using an asp file uploader. It doesn't work as nice as the java one I had earlier, but there were a couple of limitations to the java one that really hindered my ability to do what I wanted.

After I got the asp uploader going, I was able to get the playlist to update using the asp file system object. I also use it on user registration to create the necessary file structure, and move a couple of files to their folder that they need to get things working.

So I have everything pretty much working like I want, except that I can only upload one file at a time (but I am sure I can figure out a way around that). One other thing is that I can't set a custom file description for the individual files, so they all just use the song file name as that, which is ok.

I want to know if there is a way to get xml to parse data right out of a database. If so, I could easily allow custom file descriptions, and let users set custom icons per song. The FSO that creates the playlist just parses the folder they are stored in and creates a new node for each file it finds. If I can get it to associate the filename with a database row, I could easily allow a web form to insert descriptions and icon names.

This shit is really frying me out. Time for bed!

[BuddhaMan]

Depending on how the player uses the playlist.xml (meaning does it need to have an "xml" extension) you could do the following.

XML or XSLT can't read databases. XML is a database already
If the flash player can take files that contain xml data, but have a different extension on them, you're golden. To test, rename a playlist.xml file to playlist.asp and specify that to the player. If the player can use that playlist do the following:

Code an .asp page to read the database and output xml in the playlist format. You need to be anal and get it exactlly right or the xml won't parse.

change the mime type in the .asp code to:

Response.ContentType = "text/xml"

Here's a good example (second section titled "Generating XML with ASP"): http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_server.asp

[=DBA=Ronin]

fricken sweet...it does work as an asp. This opens up a lot of doors for me. Now I can let users customize everything on the upload page and just append the file instead of re-writing it, using their supplied form data. Shouldn't need a db now! wOOt!

[=DBA=Ronin]

Actually, I probablly will still use a database with this. I think in the long run it will offer me more options (i.e. users want to update or delete). Using the fso can get squirley when trying to do multiple tasks with the same item.

I wish I didn't have to go back to werk...i wanna play with this!!!

[BuddhaMan]

The Man is keepin' ya down! :whipcrack:

- Use the db to store everything to include username, password, filenames and descriptions.
- Use an .asp page to substitute for the playlist.xml and do real-time db queries for their songs.
- Reminder: If you put the upload form on the same page as the flashplayer, you'll probably have to force a page refresh so the file shows up in the play list of the player.

Tip: Use the code from the following page to read in the id3 tags of the files so you can get the song/artist info and then output that in the xml of your playlist.asp page for the annotation tag.

http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtec...041701-1.shtml

Staind - Everything Changes would become

response.write "<annotation>" & strArtist & " - " & strSongName & "</annotation>" 

In your .asp page using that source code. (php tags used so the < annotation > tags show up)

[=DBA=Ronin]

The Man is keepin' ya down! :whipcrack:

- Use the db to store everything to include username, password, filenames and descriptions.
- Use an .asp page to substitute for the playlist.xml and do real-time db queries for their songs.
- Reminder: If you put the upload form on the same page as the flashplayer, you'll probably have to force a page refresh so the file shows up in the play list of the player.

Tip: Use the code from the following page to read in the id3 tags of the files so you can get the song/artist info and then output that in the xml of your playlist.asp page for the annotation tag.

http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtec...041701-1.shtml

Staind - Everything Changes would become

response.write "<annotation>" & strArtist & " - " & strSongName & "</annotation>" 

In your .asp page using that source code. (php tags used so the < annotation > tags show up)

Everything you listed is exactly what I was planning on for the DB. The upload form will not be on the same page as the player. Users will have to go to my webserver directly and log on etc etc.

I like the idea of using the id3 tag. I will have to check that out once I get everything else squared away. Usually, changes to the playlist requires not just a page refresh in order for them to show up, but you have to actually close the page and re-open it. Finding that to be annoying but oh well.