A.D

Just started work on my second WordPress plugin, this time it’s an MP3 jukebox…

XML, Flash and No Database!

A development, non plugged-in version can be found here.

So far, it has the following features:

• XML-driven, no database required
• Configurable data source (XML or PHP)
• Configurable mp3 base directory
• Configurable playlist mp3 directory (for separate albums etc.)
• Skinnable!
• Configurable text, label and title colours
• Autoplay on/off
• Pseudo spectrum analyzer overlay
• Pop-up standalone (listen whilst browsing)

The Flash movie makes the call to a PHP backend file which is responsible for traversing the mp3 folder and pulling out all the tracks. The naming of tracks and artists is by using a simple file naming convention - Track Name__Artist.mp3 - it simply splits the name if it finds a double underscore.

The configurable data source means that you can hook in MP3 playlists and stream tracks from other servers. This can either be a PHP function or a static XML file.

The player is embedded into a web page using the SWFObject method, and as such, any amount of variables can be passed at runtime. This should make things nice and easy when integrating it into WordPress…

<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
var so = new SWFObject("flukebox.swf", "flukebox", "310", "310", "8", "#FFFFFF");
so.addParam("menu", "false");
so.addParam("allowScriptAccess", "all");
so.addVariable("standalone","false");
so.addVariable("datasource","flukebox.php");
so.addVariable("mp3base","mp3");
so.addVariable("mp3dir","demo");
so.addVariable("autoplay","false");
so.addVariable("playlist_title","My Play List");
so.addVariable("show_spectrum","true");
so.addVariable("skin_name","stripe");
so.addVariable("colour_nowplaying","#996600");
so.addVariable("colour_status","#996600");
so.addVariable("colour_label","#666666");
so.addVariable("colour_playlist_title","#996600");
//so.addVariable("colour_playlist_link","#3399CC");
//so.addVariable("colour_playlist_hover","#000000");
//so.addVariable("colour_playlist_body","#000000");
//so.addVariable("colour_playlist_selected","#CC0000");
so.write("flukebox");
// ]]>
</script>

ETA roughly one week. The hardest part is trying to think of a name for it…