Caching Improvements For Android Client

[oversearch]

Hello! First post here - love this product. I recently donated and became a registered user, and I intend to keep using it for my primary media player on my Android phone (Galaxy S i897). A few technical improvements that I think would really make the player top notch on Android:

1. Cache the media library directory structure on the device. If I'm in an area with poor reception, it can take a long time to just browse around on my phone and pick files to play that I already have cached on the device. It would be nice if Subsonic cached the directory structure on the phone (either the entire thing, or just folders I've visited). Subsonic could simply keep track of the last modification date to any given folder so it would know when to push updates to the phone. This would REALLY improve the experience of using the Android client.

2. Cache album/artist art thumbnails. I can tell the little thumbnail images are getting downloaded each time as I scroll through them. This doesn't really slow things down that much, but it does eat bandwidth (which sucks for those of us on limited plans /glare at&t ) and it seems like these would be simple enough to cache.

3. Allow the user to choose the location of the cache. I'd like to be able to place the Subsonic cache on an external SD card, which is not possible on my phone (or perhaps I've overlooked the option?)

4. Error correction. Maybe not really cache related... but occasionally my downloads get corrupted if I'm moving around between areas of good/bad reception or if I'm downloading on Wifi and the connections drops out (anyone else have this problem?). To workaround this I just go delete the file and let the client re-download it. It would be nice, however, if the player could maybe do an MD5 hash comparison of the data or something like that, and then re-cache corrupt files automatically. I guess that might be asking a little much because it's pretty complicated...

I actually just noticed that the Android client source is in the SVN repo, so I might take a whack at implementing these myself if I have the time this week. Anyways - just thought I'd through in my two cents. Again, love the product, and I hope it continues to improve!

[papatel]

Second this feature request. It's seems wasteful to download the directory listing every time when you know nothing has changed.

I'd prefer an entire index caching that you can manually update or only update when a change is updated on the server. I have an unlimited plan but I still hate waiting on the list every time I click on an artist/album.

[gamezonline]

1. Cache the media library directory structure on the device. If I'm in an area with poor reception, it can take a long time to just browse around on my phone and pick files to play that I already have cached on the device. It would be nice if Subsonic cached the directory structure on the phone (either the entire thing, or just folders I've visited). Subsonic could simply keep track of the last modification date to any given folder so it would know when to push updates to the phone. This would REALLY improve the experience of using the Android client.

If i read #1 right, the app already have that. Under Select Server on the home tab select offline, and it will only show you the songs that subsonic has cached

[oversearch]

Ahh, thanks for the tip! That certainly helps in the situation I described.

It would still be very beneficial to cache the directory structure, however. Browsing your library would be much faster in general, and it would further reduce the data usage required (which should have the side effect of improving battery life while using subsonic). Why constantly update something that rarely changes when the cost is so high?

[gamezonline]

Ahh, thanks for the tip! That certainly helps in the situation I described.

It would still be very beneficial to cache the directory structure, however. Browsing your library would be much faster in general, and it would further reduce the data usage required (which should have the side effect of improving battery life while using subsonic). Why constantly update something that rarely changes when the cost is so high?

Well I can understand why it do, example on my server i have 5-6 ppl who use it and also upload song's to it via ftp (must faster and easier to me then the web GUI). So the directory structure is always changing. but at the same time i understand where you coming from.