Support for non-numeric tracknumbers tags

[awsms]

A TON of vinyl rips are tagged A1, A5, B4 etc. A bit sad to see these albums not sorted in correct order in navidrome :(
It looks like Airsonic do support them fine.

[certuna]

This would be worth looking at, but the id3v2.4 standard does say it should be numeric:

  TRCK
   The 'Track number/Position in set' frame is a numeric string
   containing the order number of the audio-file on its original
   recording. This MAY be extended with a "/" character and a numeric
   string containing the total number of tracks/elements on the original
   recording. E.g. "4/9".

FLAC/Vorbis of course has no standard, so "A1" is not wrong there.

Allowing non-numeric track numbers would make it harder to add functionality like "detect incomplete albums" later though.

[DJoLoAo]

I definitely need tracknumber to be alphanumeric too, all my library contains ripped vinyl in flac. Right now Navidrome doesn't display the tracks in the right order.

[deluan]

Thanks for reporting. I also have albums like this, my workaround is simply change the tracks to a numeric sequence (1, 2, 3,...) I may take a look at this later, but it is not a priority for now.

[DJoLoAo]

Thanks for your answer. Would it be a problem to change the variable to string? I´m not willing to change the right order just to have work around. I prefer to make a fork. For this I´d like to know if it would make a logic problem inside navidrome to use string instead, thx and big up for your fab work!

[deluan]

For this I´d like to know if it would make a logic problem inside navidrome to use string instead

Go is a typed static language, Just change the type to string and see where it breaks :) But.....

Would it be a problem to change the variable to string?

In the Subsonic API, track is numeric, so this would not work or even break communication with some (all?) Subsonic clients.
If you really want this I think the best thing to do is:

1. At scan time, convert "A1", "A2", ... to 1, 2... At least the tracks would be valid for all clients (subsonic and ND's UI)
2. Optionally, you could add a new field (TrackStr?) in the media_file model/table, store the original string value there. It would be automatically exposed to Navidrome's UI, where you could display it instead of the numeric one. This would not change how track numbers are displayed in Subsonic clients, thou.

If you really implements this, a PR would be great! Good luck!

[certuna]

I like the TrackStr idea, should be fairly simple to implement at scan time. Do an IsNumeric check, if false then populate the TrackStr field in the media_file table.

Client-side, if there's no track number, then display TrackStr. And sort tracklists first by TrackNr then by TrackStr

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