I’m really digging Plex, and am a new user, but it’s now the “center” of my home theater setup. This being opensource and all, it would be nice to give back. I"m guessing a plugin would be a good way to start. Maybe.
I’m not really an experienced developer at all, and totally unfamiliar with python, but I have toyed around with some simple scripting in the past. I’ve looked at a few of the existing plugins, but still find myself a little bit lost as most aren’t really commented all too well, so it’s hard to tell what’s going on, and I’ve yet to find a plugin to base my work off of as most of the plugins are video and I’m looking to do an audio based one.
So given that I probably am a bit over my head, I’d still like to give this a try, and see if I can’t at least make an attempt at a Napster plugin. Napster, which used to be the grand-daddy of current p2p file sharing, is now a completely commercial, subscription based music service owned by Best Buy of all people. Imagine that. Regardless, eight some-odd million tracks is enough for me to pony up a few dollars a month for my subscription and I’d ~love~ to integrate that sucker into Plex.
So, for a first plugin, well, I guess I’m asking a lot. First and foremost, I’ve got to deal with the whole login part - getting and storing those parameters from the user. Then, I’ve got to deal with the actual playback interface, which leverages an Adobe Flash “Audio Handler” window that pops up. Close the window and music goes bye-bye. Its hard to tell whether or not will throw a monkey wrench into things. That to me seems to be the complex stuff, and obviously I’ve got to figure out site navigation, menuing, what and where to scrape, leveraging the sites search interface, and how to generate the lists of items necessary to feed back into the plex interface.
For those of you who have knocked out a few awesome plugins - Hulu comes to mind here, is this a little too much to ask of myself? Maybe there’s enough interest in this plugin for someone more experienced to take me under their wing?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Regards
Hi, and welcome. Sounds you are where I was a year or so back.
Sounds like you have a good idea of what’s required. Are you aware of their API: http://developer.napster.com/ ? The use of a real API simplifies things a lot compared to having to scrap the HTML and deal with flash. I’ve not looked into the details of the API, what’s available etc. but it could be a good place to start.
As for an example, any audio plugin should work, but the main difference to video is that you add TrackItem rather than VideoItem to the MediaContainer.
Jonny
I scoped out the Napster API earlier today, thanks for the tip, I think it will help out a bit.
The API will let you navigate around and pull metadata and artwork, however you have to get some “special dispensation” from them before they’ll let you access actual streams or allow a user to login through the API. They do this by giving you a unique API key and granting that key permissions.
I think my approach, as a fledgling developer, is to use the existing API to build out the navigation and the UI and basically build out a plugin that navigates but is unable to actually play any of the media. If I actually do get that far, then I can see what kind of hurdles one has to jump through to actually get the permissions to allow user login and media streaming. That way, if I fail in epic proportions, I at least won’t have burned anyone else’s cycles.
Well, I’m making progress. Slowly. Painfully. Painstakingly even. But progress nonetheless. Using the Napster API which was so nicely pointed out to me I’m actually able to get my Napster plugin to go off and fetch and actually display the results in the Plex interface. So at this point, I’m at the lather, rinse, and repeat stage as I build my menus. Once that’s structured properly I’ll get the graphics set up. At that point, I should then be able to petition the powers to be over at Napster to see if they’ll authorize the API key to allow for user login and the actual playback of media.
Sounds like plugin development to me 
Looks like you’re progressing well but let us know if you need any pointers.
Hey mdwar
Did you ever get anywhere with this? I would love to have Napster integrated in with Plex also!
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