Leethan2Theece is a music discovery program based on /r/listentothis (yeah, there is a play on word with this subreddit, 1 cookie to whoever finds it!).
user's perspective
Just start the program. Your default browser will open with a loading screen. Once it's done, a search bar allows you to type a genre query (with suggestions). Hit enter, and a playlist of songs of that type will start automatically, to please your ears with unknown but great songs!
what's behind
- Fetches posts from Reddit subreddit /r/listentothis
- Extracts songs information (artist, title, genre, ...)
- For each song, fetches more info from the domain the song is hosted on (YouTube likes, Soundcloud play count, ...)
- Computes a score for each song, based on their fame and their "quality"
- Hosts a local HTTP server to provide a user interface
- A search engine handles user's queries and returns corresponding songs
- A player handles songs from different domains to play the playlist automatically
Until now, supported domains are YouTube and Soundcloud, the two most used domains on this subreddit from what I've seen. I plan to add Spotify and Bandcamp.
why Java?
Good question. Don't really have an answer. Why not? Just wanted to try it out. Not disappointed.
You can for sure clone this repo, but the jar file is enough. It contains everything.
If you're using the jar file, you can use it by double-clicking in a graphic interface. Though I recommand is using it in command lines:
java -jar l2t.jar [options]
| option | extanded | argument | description |
|---|---|---|---|
-h |
--help |
display this help menu | |
-l |
--log |
activate the logger | |
-c |
--config |
filename | load a given config file |
-p |
--priority |
int | log priority level: verbose (0), debug (1), information (2), warning (3), error (4) |
-t |
--timeout |
int | the server timeout (in seconds). Warning: if you then load a config file with a new SOCKET_TIMEOUT, the config file wins! |
See below for more info about the logger and the config file.
A configuration file allows any user to changes the way the program handles the posts and the songs. Lines starting with a # are ommitted, as for empty lines. Syntax of a line is
PARAMETER=value
See the file .config for an example
| parameter | default | description |
|---|---|---|
PORT |
8080 | The port to open the local server on. Do not change unless you already have a library file to load. |
SOCKET_TIMEOUT |
10000 | Server timeout, in milliseconds, applied once the library is built. |
FETCH_AMOUNT |
999 | The number of posts to fetch on the subreddit. |
REFRESH_AMOUNT |
50 | The number of posts to fetch when refreshing the library. |
WEIGHT_FAME |
2 | Importance of fame score in global song score |
WEIGHT_QUALITY |
1 | Importance of quality score in global song score |
MATCH_SCORE_MAIN |
3 | Importance of main genre noun match in match score |
MATCH_SCORE_SUBS |
1 | Importance of genre adjective match in match score |
WEIGHT_SONG_SCORE |
1 | Importance of song score in song search score |
WEIGHT_MATCH_SCORE |
1 | Importance of match score in song search score |
FILE_LIBRARY |
library.json | The file to save the library to |
FILE_TOEKN |
token.json | The file to save the token at |
FILE_LOG |
.log | The file to save the log at |
USER_AGENT |
Mozilla/5.0 | User agent to use when send HTTP requests. |
CORR |
see example | To handle typos and synonimity across genres, the software uses a table to map the corresponding genre. If one line in the configuration file starts with CORR, then the default map is totally emptied and replaced by the lines from this file. Format is main genre:sub genre 1;sub genre 2. You can add as much sub genres as you want, by separating them with semi-colons. |
The logger saves the output of the program (the differents steps, request handled) and most importantly the exception raised when a problem is encounted (warning if not big of a deal, error otherwise). When reporting a bug, it is nice to provide the log alongside to help understanding what happened.
The interface consists of a small website. The sitemap is the following:
/ landing page, with the search bar
/wait waiting page, when the library's loading
/library a display of all the database
/likes list of songs you saved
/search/(query) playlist page
/search/(query)?rand playlist page with the songs shuffled
The interface is pretty intuitive I think, you should not be too lost.
Web pages send pulses to the server to keep it alive everything 2 seconds. If the server does not receive any request for 10 seconds, it automatically closes. If anything happens, try to start the program with command lines. You might see an error like:
Exception in thread "main" java.net.BindException: Address already in use (Bind failed)
It means the previous program did no close correctly and still runs in the background. So you'll have to kill the process manually.
First the program needs to connect to Reddit be able to use its API. Therefore the program retrieves a token which by default is stored in token.json.
This token is account based from what I understand, so ensure to keep it to your own. Loosing it is not big of a deal, the program will take a bit longer
at the beginning to retrieve it, that's all.
Then a library is built by the program. By default, it is stored in library.json. The amount of data stored is set by the FETCH_AMOUNT parameter in the config file.
The library does update itself, but only to fetch new posts on Reddit. So if you want to fully refresh it (including YouTube statistics for example), just delete the file and a new one will be generated.
All the code documentation is stored in /doc/. It is a javadoc, generated by Java. I hope it is complete enough.
In order to make this all work, you'll need a Reddit installed app (see Reddit api doc) and a Google one. You must initialize the three concerned variable in class Config in the main function before creating the Controller. If you want to re-use the function Config.loadKays(String filename), you will have to create a file with the following format:
REDDIT_APP_CLIENT_ID
REDDIT_APP_REDIRECT_URI
GOOGLE_API_KEY
and pass the filename to the function, starting with a /, after having added it to buildpath. Then, make sure to update any URIs including the base of the URI you provided as REDIRECT_URI.
Server getting timed out on Mac using Safari
If you're using Safari and switch desktop while the program is running, the javascript pulses from the webpage will be blocked, causing the server to time out. A fix for that would be to increase the SOCKET_TIMEOUT in the config file, up to 3600000 (1 hour) for example. Simpler, just start the program with:
java -jar l2t.jar -t 3600
Restarting the program even if the previous one was not closed will not cause problem, the new one will just open the webpage and close itself.