integrate with beets database when available

[sakgoyal]

instead of indexing the library again and parsing tags, why not look for an existing sqlite database generated with beets to handle that for you? (and also use the beets config file to get all the information on the db location and settings)

https://github.com/beetbox/beets

This generates a database with all the tags ID3v2.4 tags there so you don't need to parse them again. This also means you can edit the tags there. you can then also use the mb_artistid column to get the artist on Musicbrainz. this will give you the country data. so you won't need to rely on a potentially incorrect country tag if you get the wrong result on wikipedia

This would fix:

• [Feature Request] Show lyrics from embed id3 #143
• [playback] Support ReplayGain #64
• [ Bug ] Scan existing artwork not working #148 (maybe)
• feat: use file-based smart playlists #138 (maybe, as long as the user set up smart playlists in beets)
• Exclude directory option #163

[basharovV]

Hi @sakgoyal , thanks for the suggestion. This is something that's on my mind and I'm seriously considering moving away from IndexedDB and changing the entire database / tagging backend to rely on beets instead.

I'd like to explore embedding the beets library and calling functions directly from Rust (should be possible, I think..)

[sakgoyal]

I think it just needs to generate the beets config file (with the paths and db location and stuff) and then run it. theoretically not that complicated. but all my files are singletons (not sorted into albums/artists) so it gets a bit harder to configure properly

[basharovV]

I was tinkering with this the past couple of days and got an initial version working (on feature/beets-integration if you want to check it out). There's a new setting to point to an existing beets database , which if set, will completely ignore Dexie and use beets instead. Library, albums, sorting, search are working, other features not yet but it's a start.

As for actually using beets within the app and using the plugins, I'd also like to explore this ( I saw there was some Developer API for beets but haven't looked properly into it yet). First I'd like to get the read-only database working though.

I've also taken the opportunity to clean up settings a little by adding tabs:

[basharovV]

Initial integration is coming along nicely, but there are still some questions up in the air:

• Currently the tagger writes tags directly into the file, bypassing beets. To see the updates in the beets DB, the user needs to manually re-import using the beets CLI which will update the beets DB, which can then be read by Musicat. How can we trigger the re-import from Musicat? Or even better, how can the tagger write tags using the beets CLI?
• How to deal with Musicat-specific data (eg. favourites, tags). beets supports flexible attributes, but how can we write them from the app, and query them when searching tracks and albums?