Plugin ideas for SlimServer
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Overview
This article will contain a list of future plugin ideas I have. The stuff that is in this list are things that is suitable to have as separate plugin and not incorporate into my existing plugins.
Ideas in progress or not started
Categorize plugin
Status: Not started, add your note in the discussion tab if you are interesting in this
A plugin that makes it possible to categorize your music directly on the SqueezeBox. It should be possible for the user to enter his own categories and their allowed values. Some example of categories could be:
- Genre (Pop, Rock, Classical, Folk)
- Mood (Sad, Happy, Angry)
- Tempo (Fast, Medium, Slow)
- Radio hit (Radio hit)
When the user has defined his categories and their vales it shall be possible to set categories based on these for a track directly with the remote control or web interface. It should also provide integration with the Custom Browse plugin to provide a number of browse menus based on the categories and also with the SQL Playlist plugin making it possible to create smart playlists based on the categories.
Amazon plugin
Status: Not started, add your note in the discussion tab if you are interesting in this
A plugin that makes it possible to browse Amazon.com for new music and listen to the 30 seconds previews that are available there. The problem is that the preview sound files doesn't seem to be available over the web service interface at the moment and this can make things a little bit complicated.
Allmusic plugin
Status: Not started, add your note in the discussion tab if you are interesting in this
A plugin that makes it possible to browse allmusic.com for new music and listen to the 30 seconds previews that are available there. The problem is that there is no open interface towards allmusic.com, so an implementation would probably have to parse the HTML code which could result in a solution which is very sensitive to changes in their web page.
Custom Search plugin
Status: Not started, add your note in the discussion tab if you are interesting in this
A plugin that makes it possible to do more flexible searching than standard SlimServer. The searching functionality should be based on SQL so its possible to extend it to perform searching on anything that is available in the database. To make the user interface easier to use it should use the same template mechanism as in SQL Playlist and Custom Browse plugins. It should be possible to save searches so often used searches can easily be used again.
iTunes Playlist plugin
Status: Not started, add your note in the discussion tab if you are interesting in this
A plugin that makes it possible to import iTunes playlists even though iTunes is running on a Windows computer with mp3 files and SlimServer is running on a Linux computer with flac files. The import should also take the iTunes playlist structure into account to show the playlists in a hierarchy. It is probably a good idea if the plugin has an option to remove and replace existing iTunes playlsits. The plugin could integrate with the Dynamic Playlists plugin to show the playlists in the user interface.
Multi SQL Playlist plugin
Status: Not started, add your note in the discussion tab if you are interesting in this
A plugin that makes it possible to build smart playlists bit by bit using SQL. The playlist shall work in the same way as Custom Skip works where the user can hold play on an artist or album in the browse menus and select to add it or remove it from the smart playlist. I'm not sure exactly how this shall be done, one way might be to only have a single SQL and make it possible to add statement parts to this SQL. Another way might be to have a complete SQL statement for each artist or album added to the multi playlist. The problem this plugin shall solve is the situation when you are skipping a lot of tracks with Custom Skip, today this results in timeouts. It might also be possible to solve this using the Multi Library plugin in some way to define a library bit by bit and then use the library in the standard SQLPlayList plugin to limit the returned tracks.
Finished ideas
Track Details plugin
Status: Implementation finished, is part of Custom Browse 1.20
A plugin that replaces the Song info and track details page in standard SlimServer with a more open version where plugins can add their own information and the user can configure exactly which information that shall be available there. This could maybe be done directly in Custom Browse plugin, but at the same time it feels like something that could be a separate plugin. In either way it is probably a good idea to reuse some of the menu browsing code from the Custom Browse plugin. It is probably not possible to replace the song info page in the slimserver web interface, but it should be possible to make it accessible in all Custom Browse menus which should be good enough.
