StrivingLife

Having just released version 0.2b of iTunes Playlists to Xml, I've done some updates, bringing it up to version 0.3b.

This release fixes all of the known issues, from version 0.2b.

There are no known issues with version 0.3b.

Download iTunes Playlists to Xml - version 0.3b.

iTunes Playlists to Xml requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher, and has been tested on Windows XP Home SP3, and Windows Vista Ultimate SP1.

I've created an XSLT, available online separately, that you can either use, as-is or after modification, to display your playlists on your own site.

This release offers some customization, used by the XSLT, but a future version should include the ability to select the fields you want output. A schema against which to validate should also be contained in the next release.

Comments are extremely welcomed.

Previously I discussed an iTunes application that I was working on, in C#. That application has been fixed up a bit, and is now available for download.

Download iTunes Playlists to Xml - version 0.2b.

To run the application extract the contents of the zip to a directory. Then open iTunesApplication.exe. If iTunes is not running, it will start before this application does.

Once it's started you'll see a listing of available sources (computer and iPod only), as well as a listing of all playlists for the selected source.

Clicking on a playlist will generate Xml output, for use elsewhere.

Known issues

If you start this application and then plug in an iPod, that new source (the iPod) won't be available until the application restarts.

There's no progress indicator when you select a playlist.

Generating the Xml output can be a bit slow (but I'm not sure that this is something I can resolve).

'Foreign' characters are not escaped correctly.

Future features

The ability to select what items you want in the Xml output.

A schema by which to validate the Xml contents.

A stylesheet that can be used for basic styling of Xml output.

For better or worse, when I began setting up my iPod I opted to manually organize my iPod. In large part, this was because at the time I had a machine with a pretty small hard drive, and couldn't keep all of my music on it.

However, with a new HP, I was able to store all my music on that computer, as well as back it up to a USB drive.

Unfortunately, that means that my playlists, ratings, play counts, etcetera, are stored solely on my iPod. Not a good situation to be in. If we could export our iPod library using iTunes, like we can for the library on our computer, it might not be so bad. However, that's not the case.

I've tried manually rating my music on my computer, every once in a while, but it's ended up a disaster.

While I was digging into the iTunesDB, I found a post on how to use a custom library to query this file using C#. Further digging revealed that once you install iTunes you can use C# (etcetera) to access a COM, thereby getting results directly out of iTunes.

But, it seems to be very resource intensive to query iTunes and pull information.

I've created a test application (called iTunes Application) that queries iTunes and outputs the following information;

• sources of the kind library or iPod
• playlist names and kinds on those sources
• the first 10 songs, with the number of stars, on any "Music" playlists

Because of the way it operates, if iTunes isn't started, it will be when the application begins. Outside of writing to a text box and label, no writing occurs, so the application should be pretty safe. Tested on Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows XP Home, with iTunes 8.0.2.20. .NET is required (probably 3.5).

What I'd like to do is have it allow you to pull the songs/ratings for any playlist, on any device. Then I can do a compare to determine what songs are different.

Download iTunes Application pre-alpha.