SubsonicJ Desktop Application

[bmj1086]

On Github - https://github.com/bmj1086/SubsonicJ

Current Features:

• Music plays great
• Playlists work
• Play All button
• Artist lists saves to cache and only update when the server list has changed
• Filter artists
• Volume control
• Display track playback location
• Album art
• Full media controls (skip back/forward, stop, play, pause, shuffle, repeat)

Daily updated TODO list can be found here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_oQL3dGmu5Pwuf3rFPYJLAvQfdKKrJcSHOCAnoyzt8o/edit?hl=en&authkey=CKKq1Cs

TODO: (as of 4/1/11)

• If album art is null, use a default image. Currently causes exception
• Use button with icon for the volume label (pressing will mute)
• Show playlist in main table area with navigation buttons
• Implement all navigation buttons (shuffle all, etc)
• Add breadcrumb in space above main display area and below the navigation buttons
• Hide navigation buttons when album or artist isn't showing
• Show random, recently added, etc on main window before first artist is loaded
• Add Home button to beginning of the breadcrumb which will show ^
• Change repeat button to JToggleButton
• Change GetArtist, AlbumTable and SongTable from hand written threads to use SwingUtilities.invokeLater
• Add Desktop Notifications (http://goo.gl/1b9td)
• Add tray icon. Similar to Pandora One.
• Add menu bar to main window.
• Add option for mini-UI. (later)
• Shuffle button should put playing song at first slot or change currentPosition variable to 0 to prevent playlist ending early.
• Add cache storage for album information and songs lists. Use the ID of the directory and song to store in xml.
• Add option to “Refresh all data from server” which will nullify all cache files and reload from the server.
• Show year on album table (if possible)

Here are some screenshots of what I've done so far (no the GUI is not finished so yes it looks blank in some places)






UPDATE (3/30/11): Here is a pre-alpha version for you guys to test out. The Add All button DOES NOT work but everything else should. I have tested in Ubuntu, Windows XP and Windows 7. This is just a preview of the full application. Read the TODO list to see features I am in the process of adding for the full version. When the full version is released it will be free of charge.

YOU MUST HAVE JAVA RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT INSTALLED AND UPDATED TO RUN THIS PROGRAM
To install JRE go to http://goo.gl/7G3Dx.
To check if you have JRE installed open cmd/terminal and run this command

Code: Select all

java -version

If java is installed it will say something along the lines of

Code: Select all

java version "1.6.0_24"
java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07)

Download: v0.1a (jar) http://goo.gl/HOQ3j

Feel free to comment with suggestions (Please make sure they're not already in the TODO list )

[bmj1086]

reserved for future use.

[jrh.koenig]

Hi bmj1086,

your app runs successfully on my Mac ( Snow Leopard).

Regards

Johannes

[bmj1086]

Hi bmj1086,

your app runs successfully on my Mac ( Snow Leopard).

Regards

Johannes

Thank you very much. That's what I needed. How did everything perform? Any lag when pausing, stopping, skipping? Thanks for trying it out.

[jeffcavicchi]

I'll give it a go when I get back into the office and am on my Windows 7 machine...

[laylac062]

apologies if I'm being really stupid...but I just downloaded Subsonic today and the Android app works great, as does the web version, but for some reason I can't get SubAir to work and would love to try this desktop client instead.

I downloaded the .zip file from GitHub, but I'm not sure what to do next. I've gotten as far as seeing the lib and src folders. I can't launch any of the .jar files, but I'm not even sure if that's what i'm supposed to be doing! I'm on a Mac, btw, if that matters.

Please help - i have a feeling I'm pretty clueless and it's an easy fix. thanks!

[bmj1086]

apologies if I'm being really stupid...but I just downloaded Subsonic today and the Android app works great, as does the web version, but for some reason I can't get SubAir to work and would love to try this desktop client instead.

I downloaded the .zip file from GitHub, but I'm not sure what to do next. I've gotten as far as seeing the lib and src folders. I can't launch any of the .jar files, but I'm not even sure if that's what i'm supposed to be doing! I'm on a Mac, btw, if that matters.

Please help - i have a feeling I'm pretty clueless and it's an easy fix. thanks!

You don't have to download anything from Github. If you want to run the application there's a download link at the bottom of the OP for a jar file that you just download and open.

[jeffcavicchi]

Downloaded it and connected fine - although I had to enter the server info and then shut the program, reopen it, and then reconnect before the interface would open.

However, it takes forever to load anything, and I never even got a chance to play anything. Looks nice, but functionally it needs some work.

[calvintml]

Hi bmj1086,

your app runs successfully on my Mac ( Snow Leopard).

Regards

Johannes

Thank you very much. That's what I needed. How did everything perform? Any lag when pausing, stopping, skipping? Thanks for trying it out.

also snow leopard
pausing is immediate. stopping/skipping/play ~1.5 second lag (not a problem, just noting because it is longer than that for pausing).

let me know if you would like me to test anything else and i'll tell you if i notice anything else.

[bmj1086]

Downloaded it and connected fine - although I had to enter the server info and then shut the program, reopen it, and then reconnect before the interface would open.

However, it takes forever to load anything, and I never even got a chance to play anything. Looks nice, but functionally it needs some work.

It's odd that you had to close and open again after entering the server info. I just tried to recreate that situation on XP and 7 with no luck but I will continue to pursue the situation. The load times are based on the speed of your Internet connection, Server hardware and PC hardware (the one you're running SubsonicJ on). I am working on GUI progress updates for loading situations. The initial load of artists is longer because it's loading from the server (it's never more than about 3 seconds for me on my slowest setup). Once the artists initially load they are stored to cache and it should be less than half of a second for loading artist indexes until the server index has changed. I am in the process (as we I type) of adding album and song cache to make the loading even quicker.

What are the specs of your devices (server and PC) and Internet connection?


Thanks for the feedback!

[bmj1086]

also snow leopard
pausing is immediate. stopping/skipping/play ~1.5 second lag (not a problem, just noting because it is longer than that for pausing).

let me know if you would like me to test anything else and i'll tell you if i notice anything else.

Thanks again. I'm glad pausing is immediate I worked hard on that. I'm working through some kinks in the stopping and skipping to get them to be as close to instant as possible. As far as playing, that can only be as fast as your computer can read it from the server (captain obvious ) but I am working on making it as fast as possible. I may come back to you for some Mac testing since I have no access to a Mac. The only reason I can access XP is because we use it at work (no idea why...)

[jeffcavicchi]

Server is an XP machine, running SS on a Windows 7 machine. I narrowed the loading problem down to certain albums - not sure why it happens on some albums and not others. Curiously, the albums that won't load are also albums where the cover art is not displayed (even though the albums have cover art attached to them). If you want access to my server to test for yourself, send me a PM.

you also need to allow tabbing backwards through levels - once you are down to the album level there seems to be no way to tab back out to the artist level, etc (unless I am missing something).

The interface is very promising - I'll help iron out the kinks in any way I can.

[jeffcavicchi]

Figured out the problem - the interface cannot handle entires with more than one sub-level. Example - artist/subfolder/subfolder. I use this structure for multi-disc collections - the first folder is named for the artist, the first subfolder is named for the collection, and then inside that are additional folders, one for each album in the collection.

Anything following the straightforward artist/album layout works fine.

[bmj1086]

Figured out the problem - the interface cannot handle entires with more than one sub-level. Example - artist/subfolder/subfolder. I use this structure for multi-disc collections - the first folder is named for the artist, the first subfolder is named for the collection, and then inside that are additional folders, one for each album in the collection.

Anything following the straightforward artist/album layout works fine.

Aha! Initially I noticed that but since I only had about three multi-disk collections I changed my server directory style with the intentions of adding that functionality to the TODO list . I just updated the TODO list.

As far as the breadcrumb for going up and down folders/directories, that's already on the TODO list . If you look, there's already a space above the albums/songs area where I placed the table for the breadcrumbs

My major priority right now is to get the media controls working as efficient as possible (which is just about done). So I uploaded this pre-alpha version to have you guys test out the functionality of the media playback. Once they operate like I want, the features are just as easy as typing the code. Most of the features are already ready in my mind but I try to stay on one task until I complete it so I put my ideas on the TODO list until I'm finished with my current task .

Thanks for investigating that for me!

[jeffcavicchi]

No worries! So far the project looks great - I am excited to see where this goes. The ability to handle sub-sub-folders is important for me - once you get that straightened out, I'll put some real miles on this and let you know how it works for me...

Thanks for putting in the effort!