ReneDeGroot.nl - A Homepage MPDplayer René de Groot
Introduction MPDplayer is a php-javascript webpage to control a Music Player Daemon (MPD). Music stored on a remote machine can be played by sending commands to MPD running on that remote machine. MPDplayer runs on a webserver with PHP and sends the commands to MPD when you search, play and browses songs on the MPDplayer webpage. I discovered MPD when trying to utilize the potential of having a stored away server hooked up to a stereo-system. MPD offers fast, easy, multi-user access by means of many different interfaces. It has console based interfaces, GUI's and webbased interfaces. I was not quite satisfied with the web interfaces. With the publication of a AJAX tutorial in Linux Magazine and the longstanding intention to reacquaint myself with HTML and PHP I started this project. Looks The following screenshot shows how MPDplayer looks. MPDplayer The layout is done by normal HTML tables where each is filled by a call to a PHP function. The looks are defined by a single separated CSS style definition. The layout and looks are thus easily changeable by anyone with basic HTML and CSS knowledge. Features MPDplayer provides a utilitarian interface to MPD. The webpage does not need to reload since the changing parts update asynchronous. Elements respond to your mouse movements and clicks. Further features, ordered by interface element, are:
  • Player
    • Displays the playing song
    • Play, Stop, Pause, Forward and Rewind
    • Time display
    • Up to 5 playlist songs displayed
    • Forward and backwards of the shown playlist part
    • Center around the playing song in the playlist
    • Clearing of the playlist
    • Toggleable shuffle and repeat
    • Remove a song from the playlist
    • Play a song in the playlist
  • Directory browser
    • Displays the current directory
    • Open subdirectories of the current path
    • Open subdirectories of the current directory
    • Add entire directories to the playlist
    • Initiate a update of the MPD index
  • Playlists
    • Browse playlists
    • Open playlists
    • Save playlists
  • Searching
    • Search with a keyword on title, artist, album or filename
  • Song browser
    • List the songs of the current directory
    • List the songs of the search result
    • Add songs to the playlist
    • Insert songs directly after the current song
    • Add URL's to the playlist
 Usage Requirements and installation MPDplayer requires a webserver that can interpret the php pages. The php code is written for PHP version 4, other versions could pose a problem. Security settings should allow the php interpreter run by the webserver to connect with sockets to the MPD. Installation consists of unpacking the program into a directory of the webpage. MPDplayer requires a webserver that can interpret the php pages. The php code is written for PHP version 4, other versions could pose a problem. Security settings should allow the php interpreter run by the webserver to connect with sockets to the MPD. Installation consists of unpacking the program into a directory of the webpage. On the client side the webpage requires a browser with a recent javascript implementation. Problems with running MPDplayer on Internet Explorer consist of failure to completely obey the CSS2 style definition. Recent versions of KHTML browsers, Mozilla browsers and Opera work fine. A computer running a MPD is needed to actually play music. The configuration.php must be altered with the settings of the MPD that will be controlled. How to use Browsing for songs can be done by clicking directory names in the list of directories. Going to a higher directory then the current one can be done by clicking on a directory of the current path. The songs in the current directory are shown in the songs list. Searching is an other option to find songs. This can be done by selecting a search type, specifying a keyword and then clicking the search button. The search results will be shown in the songs list. Songs can be added to the playlist by a number of ways. First there is the option to open a save playlist. These reside in the Music directory at the root of the path. Clicking a saved playlist will add all its songs into the player playlist. Secondly when browsing the directories clicking on the add left of a directory will add all the songs found under that directory to the player playlist. Thirdly the songs shown in the songs list can be added to the playlist. This can be done by either clicking the add, and adding them to the end of the playlist queue. Or by clicking the song itself and inserting them directly after the currently playing song, making it the next song to be played. This goes for both the situations when the songs displayed are those found in a directory or are the result of a search query. The player lets you control the which song is played. Play, Stop and Pause do just that for the current song. Whilst playing the Frw and Rew can be used to change the currently playing song. The list of songs next to the player controls is the section of the playlist with the current song. A different section can be shown by using the Forward and Backwards of the playlist. Shuffle and Repeat change how the playlist is played and can be toggled. Clear removes all the songs from the current playlist. Workings foo Todo's The lack of a user base and real world testing and well defined requirements results in omissions of features. These will be added when I become aware of them. Currently the following additions are planned.
  • Forward and rewind should also work when a song is not playing
  • Your suggestion?
 Download Latest: Release 4.2 fixes javascript 1 bug and adds multiple search fields. Thanks go to Ross for submitting his patch. A new version including a new feature. Version 4.1 of MPDplayer adds a control to access the volume control of the MPD deamon. This new version fixes two bugs, one caused by using HTML escaped characters to communicatie with the MPD backend. This broke the capability to use files and directories with HTML specials characters. The second bug that is fixed is that the search list is now cleared when doing a new search. Thanks to Ivan and Matthias for their feedback. A new version including some new features. Version 4.0 of MPDplayer unlocks the (MP3) streaming capabilities of the MPD deamon, adds some interaction with the playlist, caches the saved playlists and combines the directory with the listed directory elements. I have also removed some tables used to do layout and moved the body of the page into the default style. Combined with some improvements to the CSS this should simplify changing the appearence of the program. Thanks go out to Bill for his helpful feedback. And again a new release 3.3. of MPDplayer. This latest version adresses a problem in display.php on line 161. I believe the problem is caused by returning a reference to a function call instead of reference to a variable. Must be all the Java that I am used to.
Thank you AJ and Matthias for reporting the bug. An other bugfix version is available of release 3 which removes a couple of memory leaks when running under some browsers. Be sure to grab this release 3.2. Thanks go out to Bill for reporting this problem. An bugfix version is available of release 3 which removes an error when MPDplayer is run with PHP-5. If you wish to run MPDplayer with version 5 of PHP be sure to grab this release 3.1. Thanks go out to Andreas for reporting this problem. A third release of MPDplayer is available. This release features a new look with icons from the BlueSphere Icon Theme. The load generated by MPDplayer is lowered and the current playlist has undergone some improvements. Different styles can be created and chosen with the configuration. A style currently consists of a style sheet and a set of icons. A second release of MPDplayer is available. This version adds support for Opera, KHTML browsers. The program is now usable with Internet Explorer. A first release of MPDplayer is available. This version works only on (new) Mozilla based browsers. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.