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115 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
115 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
QuickPlay
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===
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A simple Xamarin.Android app to allow fast playing of songs on remote players
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like MPD. Supports all Android versions since KitKat (to repurpose an old tablet).
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Setup of additional services
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===
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Since QuickPlay is only a frontend to MPD running somewhere, and the location
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has to be specified in the player configuration (see below).
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Currently, only unauthenticated MPD connections specified by IP address are supported.
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Usage
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===
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First, make sure that you have the player configuration INI file. Put that on
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the magic URL: <http://www.ms.mff.cuni.cz/~turinskp/znelky.ini>. Now run the
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app, your songs will appear and you can play them.
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An example commented INI file is provided: `playerconfig.ini`. This is what you
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would see if you use that:
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Architecture Overview
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===
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The app comprises of three main parts:
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- Configuration
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- Player -- the backend
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- Layout -- the frontend
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Configuration
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---
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The configuration is split into two parts: Applocation configuration and player
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configuration.
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Application configuration is local to the device and describes application
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behaviour and where to obtain the player configuration. It
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is just a XML-serializable class (for simplicity).
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Player configuration is stored on an HTTP server or local filesystem. It is an
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INI-like file designed to be written by hand. Since INI is not a well-specified
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format, the specific format used in QuickPlay is described in `IniParser.cs`
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file. (It was faster to implement own format than to find a usable one on
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NuGet.) For use as a player configuration, the section `[general]` has to be
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specified with connection details, other sections directly describe individual
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songs.
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The motivation for the split is to make player configuration easily shareable,
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e.g. by a QR code pointing to the config.
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Currently, there is no application configuration and the player configuration
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is always downloaded from <http://www.ms.mff.cuni.cz/~turinskp/znelky.ini>,
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Players
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---
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QuickPlay is designed to support other players, not just MPD. Therefore, a
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`Player` is just an interface that can play Playables and export some trivial
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state.
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A `Playable` is an abstract object that can be played. Usually it is a song
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(description thereof), but there is a possibility it could be for example a
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playlist. (In the extreme case that someone would like to play chess instead of
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songs, the individual chess pieces would be playables.)
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In order to allow players to show current state, `MainActivity` has method
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`OnPlayerUpdate`, which re-fetches player state and displays it.
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It is expected that the players will maintain a service to monitor the remote
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state. It is not required though, it is really implementation detail of the
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client. (`MainActivity.OnPlayerUpdate` still has to be run on UI thread.)
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### MpdPlayer details
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The MpdPlayer is just a thin wrapper around [slightly
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patched](https://github.com/LEdoian/mpcCore)
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[mpcCore](https://github.com/svanelten/mpcCore) library. It currently only
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sends commands to the MPD, but extension by service to monitor it is ready
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(`MpdMonitorService.cs`).
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Frontend
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---
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Frontend is just a bunch of boilerplate code to power the RecyclerView behind
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it. The only "original" part are layout strategies -- objects that determine in
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what order the playables will be shown, based on their metadata.
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Planned Features
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====
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- [ ] Working application configuration
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- [ ] Player configuration sharing via QR codes
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- [ ] Showing current song progress
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- [ ] Possibility to stop current song
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- [ ] MPD player monitoring service
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- [ ] Time-based layout strategy
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Bugs
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---
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- [ ] The MpcCore client seems to disconnect after some time for no apparent reason.
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The far future
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---
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- [ ] Editing the player config right on the device (with INI file export)
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- [ ] Tests. (The code should be testable, but no tests has been written yet.)
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