Re: iTunes Playlist Icons

FROM : James B. Tuley
DATE : Sun Apr 10 23:58:26 2005

On Apr 9, 2005, at 9:11 PM, Dave DeLong wrote:

> I've done something similar to this in another language, and here's
> the gist of how I did it:
>
> (I'm going to assume you're loading the iTunes Music Library.xml into
> an NSDictionary, because that would be the smart thing to do)
>
> You can loop through the playlists in the dictionary, and check if
> each one contains a key of either "<key>Smart Info</key>" or
> "<key>Smart Criteria</key>".  If the playlist has either of those
> keys, you can assume it's a Smart Playlist.  If it doesn't, then you
> check to see if the name is either "Library" (give it the Library
> icon), "Party Shuffle" (give it the P.S. icon), or "Purchased Music"
> (give it the green playlist icon).  If it's not a smart playlist and
> doesn't have any of those names, you can safely assume that's it's
> just a standard drag-and-drop playlist.
>
> I have a large .tiff file that has all of the standard iTunes playlist
> and device icons at full 128x128 size, so if you want them, I can
> email it privately.
>
> HTH!
>
> Dave DeLong
>
> On Apr 9, 2005, at 3:39 PM, Jerry Brace wrote:
>

>> I'm populating a NSPopUpButton with a list of playlists from the
>> iTunes Library XML - finally figured it out :)
>> I was just wondering if anyone else here has done this - and if so -
>> how did you go about displaying the correct icon for each play list.
>> I know how to attach an image - but figuring out which one based on
>> the playlist type is the question.
>>
>> For example there are these types: Library, Party Shuffled, Playlist,
>> Smart Playlist and Smart Playlist.
>>
>> Would this have to be hard coded in some way? I was just wondering
>> what the best way to go about it would be.
>>
>>
>> Jerry Brace
>> Web and Multimedia Developer
>> <email_removed>


I'm going to be rewriting my JTiTunesMusicLibrary class in the not too
distant future and releasing open source, but I'll share with you a
couple methods of what I do right now. I have a method called playlists
that just return the playlists as stored in inside iTunes Library XML,
and then I have a method prettyPlaylists, which identifies, tags, and
sorts the playlists structures so they are in the same order as iTunes.
I also have code that loads the the playlist icons dynamically from
iTunes but at this point I'm not ready to release.

  Enjoy, feel free to use!

-Jay
http://indyjt.com

-(NSArray*)playlists{
    return [[self libraryDictionary] objectForKey:@"Playlists"];
}

-(NSArray*)prettyPlaylists{
    int i;
    id tempPlaylists = [self playlists];
    id tempTotal = [NSMutableArray array];
    id tempSmart =[NSMutableArray array];
    id tempNormal =[NSMutableArray array];
    id tempMaster = [NSMutableArray array];
    id tempPurchased = [NSMutableArray array];
    id tempParty = [NSMutableArray array];
    id tempSwitch = nil;
    id nameDescriptor=[NSArray arrayWithObject:[[[NSSortDescriptor
alloc] initWithKey:@"Name"
                                                                 
ascending:YES] autorelease]];
    for (i=0; i < [tempPlaylists count];i++){
        id tempPlaylist = [tempPlaylists objectAtIndex:i];
        id tempType = nil;
        if ([[tempPlaylist objectForKey:@"Name"] isEqualTo:@"Party
Shuffle"]){
            tempSwitch = tempParty;
            tempType = @"Party";
        }else if ([tempPlaylist objectForKey:@"Master"] != nil){
            tempSwitch = tempMaster;
            tempType = @"Master";
        }else if ([tempPlaylist objectForKey:@"Purchased Music"] !=
nil){
            tempSwitch = tempPurchased;
              tempType = @"Purchased";
        }else if ([tempPlaylist objectForKey:@"Smart Info"] != nil){
            tempSwitch = tempSmart;
            tempType = @"Smart";
        } else {
            tempSwitch = tempNormal;
              tempType = @"Normal";
        }
        id tempDictionary = [[tempPlaylist mutableCopy] autorelease];

        [tempDictionary setObject:tempType forKey:@"Type"];

        [tempSwitch addObject:tempDictionary];
    }

    [tempTotal addObjectsFromArray:[tempMaster
sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:nameDescriptor]];
    [tempTotal addObjectsFromArray:[tempParty
sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:nameDescriptor]];
    [tempTotal addObjectsFromArray:[tempPurchased
sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:nameDescriptor]];
    [tempTotal addObjectsFromArray:[tempSmart
sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:nameDescriptor]];
    [tempTotal addObjectsFromArray:[tempNormal
sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:nameDescriptor]];

      return tempTotal;

}