On Apr 20, 2006, at 14:45, Molitor, Stephen L wrote:

> OK I'm getting waaaayyy off topic now:
>
> I just bought an IPod and plan on burning my classical music collection
> to it.  I've heard there are some issues categorizing and labeling
> classic music on ITunes.  Are there any good Ruby libraries for dealing
> with Itunes catalogs?  I'm using a Mac so Ruby AppleScript wrappers
> would work too.


> There are a lot of different ways to sort based on the various kinds of
> meta-data, and it would be a pain to have to code a special method to
> sort on each type of meta-data:
>
> list.sort_by_artist, list.sort_by_title, etc.

If one were satisfied with a one-key sort, this would work. I, alas, 
wasn't willing to have all the tracks randomly listed within each 
artist or whatever.

I created a ruby program that would allow me to do quite a bit of 
processing on my iTunes library. First, I had to (re)create the 
information from iTunes about/for each Track.

class Track
	attr_reader :dbid
	attr_accessor :name, :album, :artist, :tracknumber, :trackcount
	attr_accessor :location, :genre, :year, :rating, :enabled, :playeddate
	attr_accessor :playedcount, :start, :finish, :duration, :EQ, 
:composer, :dateadded

	def initialize(id)
		@dbid = id
		self
	end
end

iTunes has a unique id number for a track which is reuses as it 
reappears in various playlists and whatnot.

The rest of the information was added to each track with the method 
'bulkload', usually, although it could be done one attribute at a 
time....

	def bulkLoad(params)
		@location = params[1]
		@location.downcase! if @location
		@name = params[2]
		@album = params[3]
		@artist = params[4]
		@tracknumber = params[5]
		@trackcount = params[6]
		@genre = params[7]
		@year = params[8]
		@rating = params[9]
		@enabled = params[10]
		@playeddate = params[11]
		@playedcount = params[12]
		@start = params[13]
		@finish = params[14]
		@duration = params[15]
		@EQ = params[16]
		@composer = params[17]
		@dateadded = params[18]
		self
	end

That, naturally, depends on feeding in the parameters in the correct 
order after getting them from iTunes. I used AppleScript to get the 
data from iTunes.

		applescript = %{tell application "iTunes"
		with timeout of 1200 seconds
		set trackData to {database id, location, name, album, artist, track 
number, track count, genre, year, rating, enabled, played date, played 
count, start, finish, duration, EQ, composer, date added, disc number} 
of } + @trackSource + '
		end
		end
		repeat with I from 1 to count of item 2 of trackData
			try
				set item I of item 2 of trackData to (POSIX path of item I of item 
2 of trackData)
			end
		end repeat
		get trackData'
		itunesdata = OSX.do_osascript applescript

What's returned isn't a Ruby Object at first, so AppleScript lists must 
be turned into Ruby Arrays, as well as their contents...

		tracklist = itunesdata.to_rbobj.map!{|list| list.to_rbobj.map{|i| 
i.to_rbobj}}

Then the array of Tracks is built...

		@tracks = Array.new
		tracklist.transpose.each do |track|
			newTrack = Track.new(track[0]) # first item is the database id
			newTrack.bulkLoad(track) # dump all the rest of the stuff into the 
new track
			@tracks.push(newTrack)
		end

All of the above is to illustrate the methodology I used for sorting 
iTunes tracks.

class Track
	def <=>(other)
		answer = self.artist <=> other.artist
		answer = self.album <=> other.album if answer == 0
		answer = self.name <=> other.name if answer == 0
		answer = self.dbid <=> other.dbid if answer == 0
		return answer
	end
end

(Yes, it could be made shorter. It's plenty fast as it is, and nice and 
clear.)

Now, all I have to do is something like @tracks.sort! and they'll be 
sorted by artist, then by album, then by name, and if there are 
multiple tracks on an album with the same name, they're arbitrarily 
sorted by their iTunes ID. I'm not personally all that interested in 
the order they appeared on my CD, so I didn't use that as a sort key.

*IF* I have the track's metadata correct then I find iTunes itself is 
perfectly capable of handling classical music. Unfortunately,  95% of 
what CDDB has is garbage, alas, with the composer listed as the artist, 
or the movement in the title and the title as the performer, or all 
sorts of corrupted or incomplete information. So my iTunes ruby scripts 
(and applescripts) were created mostly for mass library maintenance, to 
get the metadata in better shape.

If your metadata includes proper use of "Composer" and "Grouping" 
(which I see my current script doesn't, oops), then I don't know what 
"issues" there might be remaining with how iTunes handles classical 
music.