SilverSpider Play List

Important: This Package is No Longer Maintained

Due to time constraints and changed priorities, I simply don't have the time to maintain SilverSpider Playlist. Amazon will be implementing some changes at the end of March 2008 which will break this package, and having spent some time investigating the work involved in updating the package.

I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise to anyone. I don't have a list of users, so I don't have an easy method to get the word out.

If you are interested in taking over maintenance and improvement of the Playlist, please do! I will be very happy to direct people to its new home, and would likely use it myself. You can contact me via my main site.

Thanks to everyone who downloaded and used SilverSpider Playlist, most especially those who contacted me with ideas for improvements and requests for help.

Alex

Play List Example

Rebels of the Sacred Heart by Flogging Molly from the album Drunken Lullabies I Like It by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy from the album Save My Soul Tight Like That by Asylum Street Spankers from the album Mercurial Howard Hughes by Rasputina from the album Thanks for the Ether My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys by Willie Nelson from the album The Essential Willie Nelson (Disc 2) Verbum Caro by Mediaeval Baebes from the album Salva Nos

Version 1.2 (January 24, 2005 1:30 PM)

SilverSpider Play List is a set of PHP scripts that helps you add a recent music list to your Web site. Each time you listen to a song, your media player will send song information to your Web site which will gather the info, and with the help of Amazon, compile it into a list of entries, each containing the name of the song, the artist and the album cover.

The markup provided by SSPL is very clean, and each of the 12 markup formats relies upon CSS and valid XHTML to control layout and style.

Download

Download the current version (67KB Zip)

Documentation

While this package is pretty easy to set up and use, please be sure to read the documentation to learn how to install and use SilverSpider Play List.

Examples

The package can be seen in active use on my Web site and Easily Amused. If you would like to see the basic output of the scripts, a static version is available as well. Note, this static page is meant to be included within a larger design, so it does not include any styling, nor the full markup for a Web page.

Features and Changes

Changes from version 1.0 are:

Version 1.2

• User-specified album covers: SSPL will check to see if the current album name/artist name combination is listed in the Artist Name Override file, and if it is, it will use the images that are specified. Images (small, medium, large are all defined) are specified as URLS from any Web site, so you can use Images from Amazon, or post your own.
• Keep the play list file to a reasonable size (hat tip to Sean for helping with the solution)
  • New config setting: $PlayListLength to define how many songs should be stored in the play list file
• Moved the list of Various Artists from config file to separate the file
  • No longer needs closing comma, nor does it require escaping of special characters
  • Updated the in-line comments
• Changed the format of the various artists file, allowing user to specify the artist override name. While most albums in the list will use 'Various Artists', the user could have one album use 'Various Artists - Country', and another album could use 'Jazz Masters (Series)'
• Added basic international Amazon query support, so users can choose to query the international Amazon sites instead of just the US .com site. This is still in a testing mode, and will be a beta feature within 1.2. Future versions should bring it up to speed. At this point, only one site will be queried, so SSPL will not check international domains if it cannot find an album on Amazon.com. Sorry.
  • us (default)
  • uk
  • de
  • fr (testing)
  • jp(testing)

Version 1.1

• Added ability to choose image size. You may now choose between small (50 x 50), medium (130 x 130) and large (300 x 300) sizes.
• Modified the show_playlist function to allow the developer to pass their choice of image size. The function now requires a fourth parameter, which will take 'Small', 'Medium' or 'Large' as its value.
• Updated the static file creation to account for the new image sizes
• Added $StaticAlbumImageSize to the configuration file
• Split $MissingAlbumImage into $MissingAlbumImageSmall, $MissingAlbumImageMedium and $MissingAlbumImageLarge to account for new image size options
• Added six formats (7 - 12)

Feedback, Questions & Suggestions

Contact Me

I would love to hear your what you think of this code as well as any suggestions that you may have. I am also more than happy to answer questions as they arise (and as my schedule permits). So, feel free to contact me.

Official Site

Legalese

Copyright © 2005 Alex Jones

Full license info