MediaBox

A simple web interface to access to your media from anywhere. Open ID login with whitelisting. Open-source project, using Django, Python, Backbone.js, HTML5, Bootstrap from Twitter.

Setup

1. Install required python modules

    pip install -r requirements.txt
   

2. Create database (sqlite3), and admin account

    ./manage.py syncdb
   

3. Create a symbolic links to your media collections:

    mkdir static/media
    ln -s /path/to/public/collection static/media/public
    ln -s /path/to/private/collection static/media/private
   

4. Import ID3 genre data to use as canonical genre meta data

    ./manage.py import_id3_genres
   

5. Synchronize meta data of media files from the filesystem into the database

    ./manage.py sync_media
   

6. Start local website on localhost:8000

    ./manage.py runserver
   

7. Visit http://localhost:8000/

Local settings

The default settings.py is suitable for development. To override some settings, especially DATABASES and SECRET_KEY, create a custom local_settings.py file, based on the included local_settings.py.sample and call manage.py like this:

./manage cmd --settings=local_settings

Live demos

• http://mediabox.janosgyerik.com/

Screenshots

Features

• Browse directory of music files
• mp3 files are playable in the browser using Yahoo! WebPlayer (looking for a suitable alternative, implemented in pure html5)

Well that's pretty much it for now. And it's working fine like that. But that's not great.

Work in progress: (stuff that's working but not really used yet)

• Import meta data from mp3 files and store in a local database cache for fast access

• Supported audio formats:

  • mp3
  • (more are coming soon, can be added easily using mutagen)

Technologies used or planned (for aspiring contributors)

• django/python: database not used yet, but will be used to replace folder traversal
• a versioned and defined and stable ReST server as well to allow add-on's and alternate front-ends in the future, while not in code now it is thought about as features are added
• _, Backbone, jQ.tpl all powerhousing the new responsive Bootstrap Framework based set of theme(s)
• multiple views per artist, album, playlist, etc all graceful as one would expect
• mutagen: used to get music file meta data, supports many audio formats
• webplayer by Yahoo!: the current media player, but it would be great to change this to a pure html5 implementation without Flash

Planned features (most important at the top)

• Change the navigation: instead of page reloads folder by folder, load the entire collection on the client side into backbone objects and use js to navigate artists and albums.
• Search!
• Count how many times I listen to the same stuff
• Favoriting: albums, artists, songs
• Playlists!
• Add support for more audio formats: ogg, flac Note: the webplayer probably cannot play anything but mp3. A pure HTML5 player should have no problem with that.