This is a simple plugin I wrote that controls foobar2000 over a TCP/IP connection.
The source code is included.

Please PM me any problems or irregularities.

changes in 1.0.1
- nothing major has changed; just recompiled with the latest SDK

1.0.1 (for foobar 0.9) - December 4, 2006

I have a simple remote client, that works off the old Telnet control server. I have been modifying it to use this newer (hopefully supported) TCP/IP version.

It works identically, which is nice, but I've noticed a small bug.

When you get the trackinfo on connect its correct, when you issue a play command the response is correct and when you issue a 'next' its also correct.

But if the player simply ends a song and starts the next, the trackinfo that is broadcast is for the OLD song that just finished, rather than the one that just started. So if you are simply monitoring what the player is doing, its always one song behind.

Can you check this please.

Also I have a crude way to enqueue a song so it starts when the current song ends. Is there a way in the SDk to implement a queue command that overrides the current playlist, but doesn't start until the current song ends? I like to have all my songs in a large single playlist that shuffles, but I want to be able to play a song as the next item on occasion.

Thanks, in advance,

Richard

I installed this...now what do I do?

In 0.9 there is, but not in 0.8.3 and older.

popplynogood's all night flight? (Terry Riley's piece are still a good one...)

Yes. I observed the same.


In pre 0.9 the only thing there is for enque are (slightly buggy) 3d party plugin foo_temple (newest version here).


Try telneting to port 3333 (or whatever port you set up). More info is revealed by the use of search on "foo_controlserver".

I cannot seem to replicate this with my current setup right now; but I will try to take a look at it.


I may not post a lot but I visit the board every day. Not sure how I missed your thread tho. Your email was probably lost in my spam filter. PM's are good tho;) Do you still experience the problem with commands having to be issued multiple times? I cannot seem to duplicate that with my current setup.

bluestat,

I have been using the previous control server for months with my client and it has always worked fine. Its the latest version you posted a week or so ago, that is causing the incorrect song to be detailed and its ONLY when the player changes of its own accord - any time I command it to play a track or go to the next track, its the correct song that gets reported.

I wonder if its a timing issue - it looks like the code for handling a trackinfo request from the user is pretty much identical to the handletrackupdate, which is initiated by the player message. Is it possible that you get the trackupdate message and execute the get_now_playing() request so quickly that the player hasn't updated that info yet. If I issue a 'trackinfo' request a second after I see the incorrect track update, I get the correct info - so the code seems to work OK, except in that circumstance. My other machine is slower, so maybe its that, or maybe the previous version did more before it got around to executing that now_playing request? Just my thoughts...


Hope this helps,
Richard

Thanks for the detailed symptoms, that should give me a good run at it!

Right now I'm not using it that much, but I probably will again later. However, I've been using Putty for interfacing with foo_controlserver, and it seems (as mention otherplace in that thread) that unchecking "Return key sends telnet New Line instead of ^M" in Puttys settings under "Telnet" reduces this problem to a minimum.....

This is verified on my machine too, but there is a way to circumvent this (while the bug exists).

Any reply that comes from a command you issue, starts with the code '112', while notifications on track change start with '111', so whenever you get a '111' just issue a 'trackinfo' command for the correct info. This is what I did in my own song attribute manager (think matching songs a la www.last.fm tags or www.pandora.com). Another bug is that not all track changes are reported...

foo_controlserver was what I really needed to finally drop winamp (its winampcom was the last reason to still use it with my app).

I have almost finished updating this with the new 0.9 SDK; however I would like someone to help test it before I post it. If anyone would like to please send me a PM. I believe I may have fixed some of the previous irregularities reported.

Thanks!

Thanks a lot for porting this component for 0.9

I ve just quickly tried the new version and of course i have some questions/bug reports/features requets sorry

question:
Did you definitively removed the commands "order" & "order type" or will they be back in a next version ?


bug:
I have a problem with the trackinfo command, it keeps displaying the first track played

ie: i start playing song#1
-> in the console it displays "song#1"
then i type the command "next"
-> song#2 plays
-> in the console if i type "trackinfo" it displays "song#1"
and so on , i can type "next" or "prev" 10 times, it will still displays "song#1"

now if i go back to foobar and double click on song#4, the "trackinfo" command will always display "song#4"

i dont know if i m clear

feature request:
Is it possible to add the command "playlist" which would display all playlists names (with a number) and the command "playlist #" to switch to the playlist number # (found with the command requested just before)

EDIT: Damn me, i m sorry , i had not read the first post of this topic which answers most of the question i asked

These should be back once I figure out how to do it in the new SDK.


Could you please PM me a detailed scenario of this, it could probably happen;) ie. right from starting foobar, to how you started playing the song etc. I was unable to reproduce as I tested quickly, thanks!


I plan to do that in the future yep!

Found the problem with trackinfo command mentioned above. Please enable "cursor follows playback" until I can sort out a fix. Thanks Hamallainen!

Fixed this; however now if the same track is repeated in a playlist foo_controlserver will display the playlist index of the first one it encounters (when it could be a latter index it is playing) Oh la la! Maybe we should just get rid of it displaying the playlist index for the track! If anyone has any ideas I am all ears;)

How about parsing the playlist and creating an internal number for yourself, and treating the external (playlist number) as the same type of data as the rest?

On a side note, is it possible to change playlists with this?

Uploaded a new version today that supports playlists. Probably some issues with it;) Please PM me if you find them!

I've been using foo_controlserver together with icecast and oddcast, and I absolutely love it (^^)

However, it would be quite nice if someone took the time to implement a few more features into the controlserver, especially to be able to edit metatags.

e.g. edittag <field> <content> [<playlist_number> <item_number>]

if <playlist_number> is left out it uses the current playlist
if <item_number> is left out it uses the track currently playing

not to mention seeking

e.g. seek <direction> <seconds>
f = forward
b = back

...just a thought (^^)

Just uploaded a new version that has seeking support, thanks.

Another thing to add : Searching for strings (currently, searching a text with spaces doesn't work...)

Maybe detect if you have quotation marks (" ") and parse that as a string?

I'm not sure, also, but I don't know what codepage your plugin uses, for treating text... : If I want to have accented characters ("é", "à", etc...), I can't currently search for them with the default telnet client.


Also, I wanted to make a gui for your plugin, (In Java, so that it's easily portable), and was wondering how I can connect, etc.

Can anyone with java / telnet experience PM me, or offer me a guide to how to do this?

Thanks.

I believe the encoding used is UTF-8, so basically all the unicode range is supported (not only iso8859-1 characters, but even chinese, japanese etc)

Sorry; bit slow response. Searching is limited to 'one word' right now but I could look at doing more. For output you can toggle between/utf8 and lower ascii however for input everything is stripped to lower ascii so searching for accented characters is not working at the moment. I plan on fixing this. They are replaced by ? now on input.

Hi!

I've just experimented with the source of latest version, mostly trying to implement a proper playlist-index-handling.

The author of this component is right, so far I have not been able to get the list_index for the currently playing item. I tried getting the playlist-titleformat for the currently playing item, but playback_format_title also does not see the correct number, as the list_index is being rendered as "?"...

Since the list_index value is being displayed correctly inside the playlist, I can only assume that somehow all index / selection / focus values do not work outside the playlistwindow.

Maybe I will also post a new topic concerning this issue, since for my purposes (using foo_controlserver or anything else) Foobar2000 0.9 is not usable if my program is not able to get the correct list_index (if the playlist has more than one entry of a song).

Bye,

Arndt

it would be nice if you could change playlists ect.

basically-

ListPlaylist
would return the list of playlists, with numbers infront of them

Playlist N
would change the playlist to whichever one is number N; if called without a argument, it would return the current playlist

I don't really have a use for this atm, but when I do I guess I could just add this myself, shouldn't be too hard...

I'm trying to write a perl script to control foobar2000/show info on playing MP3, etc from another computer.
The showing the info part is proving quite difficult since at the moment you just drop fields out of the returned line if the specific info doesn't exist in the file that's playing.

For example, you might get

from the server.
Then you listen to the next track and get:

Notice that the field where the track number should be has been completly dropped instead of just being left blank.
This makes it really difficult to write a script based on this plugins output.

If you could, it would be nice if you left in blank fields, for example, that last track should appear as:

This makes it parsable.

Thanks.
(If an option to leave these blank fields in already exists, please point it out to me, it's 3AM and i couldn't find it when I was looking).

Thanks, I will add an option for that and post it tomorrow for you. Please let me know of any other inconsitencies you may find.

Posted a new version (beta6) with this option.

I'm getting garbled unicode characters : Th+¬+ótre is supposed to be "Théâtre"; A solution to this would be to make the codepage selectable.

Also, searching for strings still doesn't work. Would it be possible to check if quotation marks are included in the search string and automatically parse the rest as a string if there are? right now, I get a
"999|Invalid index one conversion|" error.

You need a client that can support UTF-8. If you are using PuTTy go to Window-> Translation, Asuume data to be in character set UTF-8.
You can only search for one word at a time at the moment; have not gotten to that yet.

Uploaded a new version beta7; searching support for phrases.

You rock my socks!

Now I can make a GUI for this (I'll make it in Java) -- anyone who wants it can contact me in two weeks. You can also PM me to make me do it, 'cos I'll probaly forget

Nice plugin.. any plans for authentication or source ip check?

Hi Bluestat!

Your controlserver almost works as a charm, on foobar0.9. I have one feature request and one bug.

Sometimes, after a while, the server does not do any broadcasts anymore (when vol setting changed, next track starts, etc.) so my client doesn't get updated. Could you look into this?

Furthermore, please make the max number of connection a setting in the foobar control panel, instead of a fixed 4.

Thanks again,
Maarten

I will work on adding a configurable number of clients and also an ip restriction setting (currently I just have rules in my firewall to handle this;) I have not seen the problem described where updates are no longer sent; however most of my testing is just done with one socket connection to the server. If you could PM any more details with regards how to replicate what you are seeing that would help.

Thanks!

Just a small update! I have implemented the above functions and also fixed the problem that existed if a track was listed multiple times on a playlist (it would always display the index of the first one). Also fixed a problem where some configuration options were not being saved. I need to do some more testing; but should have this posted for you all in a couple days!

Posted; please PM me if you encounter any problems or irregularities. A lot was changed; so it would not surprise me;)

Thanks!

I'm having a few issues with the search function in this version. I'm using 0.9.1 with the latest beta 9 of this plugin, running xp pro, no windows firewall, blah blah blah. When I enter some search terms it works as expected. Other times when I search, it crashes my foobar hard, with the error message "unhandled excepion : bad allocation".

Doing some more testing, when I check the UTF-8 box, it works all the time. When the box is unchecked, it doesn't work with certain search terms. I think the solution is to use the UTF-8 encoding... Anybody duplicate these problems?

Also, what about a backspace? Us ham-fisted typists like to undo.

If you could PM me the details with regards to what search terms are causing the error (if they are the same ones all the time) this could help me find the problem. Thanks!

I have noticed that for some songs, no information is present through controlserver. It has a title in foobar (didn't look at the real tags or anything) but not in the telnet to controlserver. I would request that if no information is found, title becomes filename or something?

Great work!

New update works perfectly. Thanks!

You could always add a FILENAME to your output config. But then that would always show up for all files. It's not perfect. The other way around this is to tag your files....

As one solution I added the pathraw field. FILENAME doesn't seem to work... Any chance of getting a field in the next version that just returns the filename without the path?

(as my goal is using it over possible bluetooth (and maybe even GPRS but I doubt that) every byte that can be snooped off is a good byte )

Glad it is working correctly now for you; thanks for pointing that out!


I have uploaded a new version with improved output configuration. You may now output with various title format strings. This should make it much more flexible. Unfortunately this will break the simple configurations from before; but it is not too much work to rewrite them using the title formatting.

Works great, thanks!

One thing though: %_length_seconds% now returns a number in seconds only. For example if a song was 1 minute, 2 seconds, and 300 milliseconds, it would have returned "62.30" in the old version, where it returns "62" now. Dont know if it's a bug or a feature () just thought I'd mention it.

I just downloaded this and it's EXACTLY what I'm looking for. It worked the first time
I tried using it to drive FOOBAR on my wife's computer upstairs.

She really wants a way to get audio all through the house, and I figured it's
cheaper to buy a Ramsey FM30 and tune the radios in the house to
our own private station than to run wires all through the place.

Streaming audio works, but each PC has different delays, and you need a
computer in every room.

So far, the foobar200 and controlserver does exactly what I need, and creating
a little Tcl or Lua shell around it would be fairly easy.

Ralph

This plugin has gotten me exctied. I'm attempting to use my MidpSSH-armed BlackBerry as a remote control for my Foobar2000.

I've set up all the port forwarding in the router and made the appropriate firewall changes. But, the client doesn't connect and the plugin reports

I added this IP to the allowed list, and it still won't accept the connection. I know it's a security risk to do this (expecially without a user/pass), but well, the idea is so cool!

What do you have defined in the "Allow Addresses" field? If you are using * as a wildcard, there should just be one * for each segment. For example 192.168.1.*

If you have multiple addresses they should be delimited by a comma. For example 209.9.*.*,192.168.1.*,127.0.0.1

If you could PM me further details that could help me identify what is occurring. Thanks!

Wow, thanks for the quick response! You know what? It's working now.

The asterisks I included were to protect my security, not wildcards. My "Allow Addresses" field showed "127.0.0.1,170.206.224.58", 1 allowed clients.

I tried changing "Allow Addresses" = "*.*.*.*" and 4 allowed clients, then a Foobar restart. Then it worked right away. I then tried the 170.206.224.58 address in there again, wouldn't accept the connection. Looks like I'll live without access control.

I worked on this for 3 hours today before I posted, thinking I'd find an answer. Now I feel kinda dumb. Thanks for writing this. If you need anymore testing, I'll be around.

Just a couple other thoughts; you need to enable/disable the server (or restart foobar) from the configuration page for any changes in the "Allow Addresses" field to take effect. Other than that; not sure why you are having troubles. I will do some more testing today on it.

I am definitely liking the title formatting strings support. This little plugin is becoming more and more powerful. Thanks for the hard work and bugfixes.