Add music folders to a playlist or create playlist from folder

Feature Suggestions
1

I think the Topic explains about everything ;)

 

2

If Plex doesn't implement this, I'm working on a work-around you might be interested in.

https://forums.plex.tv/topic/120292-m3u-playlist-converter/

3

Hi Moviefan,

good idea to get going - i checked your files, problem is my box runs on Debian Linux ;)

I also tried the sqllite DB, but there is no table "playlists", so i am really curious where plex stores my playlist i created for testing.... if i could find where it is, i would just hack together a shell script which adds any new files in a folder to the designated playlist. If folder has no playlist, just create it - as  simple as that and my problems/feature request is solved for now.

So if you could tell me where to find the playlist, this would also be very helpful....

Thanks in advance!

Phil

4

I’m away from my computer so i don’t have the exact madness but playlists are a combination of 3 tables. Metadata_items which hold the name, (something)_generated is the actual list, and (something)_accounts is what shows on the webapp.

5

Thanks a lot - that helped ;)

To select all entries of a playlist you would use:

select 
	pqg.playlist_id
	, pqg.id
	, mi.title
	, mi.original_title
	, d.path
	, mp.file
from 
	play_queue_generators pqg 
join metadata_items mi 
	on mi.id = pqg.metadata_item_id 
join media_items m 
	on m.metadata_item_id = mi.id 
join media_parts mp
	on mp.media_item_id = m.id
join directories d
	on mp.directory_id = d.id
where 
	pqg.playlist_id = 112764  -- check for playlist id in table play_queue_generators

the playlist_id is created from sqlite_seqence table "metadata_item_id" id is autoincrement

To get a new playlist_id you need to insert into metadata_items with "metadata_type=15" (playlist), title = playlist title, title_sort = title...

but i am not sure how to create the required "guid" field content like "com.plexapp.agents.none://e74013fa-491b-4ba2-8e2b-af12266308b0"

6

That is based on an algorithm that uses the timestamp. I found that plex doesn't really use it that i can tell so i just put the string up to the //. You also need the created at and updated at values. Those are required values.

Edit:  You don't need the directories table.  Just use the file column in media_parts.  It is not so easy to just create a new playlist.  The database doesn't support referential integrity so you have to manually add the entries into each table.  I actually start by creating the playlist entry in metadata_items, then lookup the newly created id to create the entry in metadata_item_accounts, then create all the entries for each playlist item in play_queue_generators including the metadata_item_id field from the previous step and increment the order field, then I go back to the metadata_items table and update the media_item_count, although it doesn't look like Plex uses this.  At least the WebApp doesn't.  Maybe once playlsits are supported on other clients, this will have an effect.  Mine script is also a little more complicated in that I need to check if the file I want to include in the playlist actually exists within the database.

Good luck on your efforts.

7
Here it comes, tested on my box. No responsibility at all!
You need PHP on your box with enabled SQLite support (enter php -i | grep sqlite) - if nothing is shown: apt-get install php5-sqlite
 
So if everything is installed, you can create this script (just create it somewhere on your server). 
 
 
 
IMPORTANT: 
  • The Script will only add files to the playlist which are directly within the given folder.
  • The Script itself creates a backup in the DB-Location folder named  com.plexapp.plugins.library.db.backup
  • If you are not sure: Please make a backup of your Plex-DB
  • If you execute the script again with the same parameters, the same playlist will be created twice!
 
(if you don´t know where your DB file is located, find / -name com.plexapp.plugins.library.db)
 
 
if you start the script it shows up lie this:
root@openmediavault:~/plex# php plexPlaylist.php

Please use this script with the following commands:

Welcome!


php plexPlaxlist.php   

The playlist name is shown in the different Plex Apps, you can rename it later via Plex-Web-App.

All Chars except letters, numbers, space or - will be removed!


The folder is relative to your music library, i.e. if you have a folder called Jazz located in

/media/123123/music/Jazz then just enter Jazz as folder name. The folder needs to be known by Plex!


The database-location is the absolute path to the file com.plexapp.plugins.library.db - no trailing slash!
 
so we need to enter some things (this is on my personal box - Openmediavault on Debian Wheezy)
root@openmediavault:~/plex# php plexPlaylist.php "Playlist 2014-08" 2014-08 /media/2c663779-17fc-4ecf-8acc-432adafaf229/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Databases

Result:

Connecting to Plex-DB…

Folder contains 218 items.

…


Playlist created.

Thanks for using my Script - Cheers Ph1975
 
 
If the given folder does not exist in Plex-DB, an Error is shown.
root@openmediavault:~/plex# php plexPlaylist.php "Playlist 2014-03" 2014-03 /media/2c663779-17fc-4ecf-8acc-432adafaf229/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Databases
Making backup of database...Connecting to Plex-DB...
Error: Given folder was not found in Plex-DB

see the attached screenshot for success!

8

Nice work.  Only comment is regarding the order field.  That field has a 7 digit precision so it maxes out at 9,999,000 (9,999 songs in the playlist).  Not sure why Plex uses multiples of 1,000.  I got rid of the extra zeros so my list allows 9,999,999 songs to be included.  I could have just gotten rid of 1 or 2 zeros, but I figured why allow any limit.

9

Thanks - the 1000 steps could be sort of space for later user-based reshuffling... even though it is not the nicest approach ;)

10

Yeah.  It is just easier to resort the entire list.

11

Early 2021 clean-up: duplicate