spots

this repo contains scripts to use the spotify API to extract information about playlists and construct a static site with HTML versions of each playlist, its tracks, album art, descriptions, spotify links, etc.

The script uses OAuth, and requires each user to log in via a web browser to authorize access to their playlists.

Step 1: Extract Playlist Data

The first step is to extract a list of all playlists, playlist art, and descriptions, to compile and let the user select which playlists they are interested in.

To run the extract step with a spotify username:

python spots.py [username] extract

This should initiate a manual authentication step by opening a web browser where you can log into Spotify with your username and password, as part of three-legged authentication.

If the authetication step with Spotify is successful, you will see spots begin to process all of your playlists to compile them into JSON files.

If the authetication step with Spotify fails, see below.

Step 1B: Clear The Cache

If the above step results in an invalid (old) token, remove the file .cache-<username>.

Step 2: Edit Playlist Data

Step 1 will result in a master_list.json containing info about each of the user's playlists.

The next step will use the data in master_list.json to generate a static site containing a list of all the Spotify playlists in master_list.json.

Before running that step, master_list.json can/should be edited to filter any playlists that should be excluded from the final static site.

Workflow

We typically store the original master_list.json and an edited master_list_edited.json in a folder named master_list_YYYY-MM.

The master_list_edited.json is edited by hand to contain only the playlists to end up on the final page.

mster_list_YYYY-MM/master_list_edited.json is then copied BACK to master_list.json in the repo root directory, before the next step, the create action, is run.

What if no editing is necessary?

If no editing of the list of playslists is necessary, then the master_list.json file can be used as generated in Step 1.

Checking master_list.json

Make sure and lint the JSON file before running Step 3. This can be done with Python:

$ python -m json.tool master_list.json

Step 3: Create Static Site

Create a static site using the spotify playlist IDs specified by the user by calling spots with the create action:

python spots.py [username] create

This will generate the site into the directory specified by OUTPUT_DIR in spots_objects.py.

Deploy Strategy

Clone a copy of the repo (the gh-pages branch) in the current directory into the directory site:

git clone -b gh-pages [email protected]:charlesreid1/spots site

Have the spots.py script generate the static contents of the site in the output directory. This is the default output directory (see OUTPUT_DIR in spots_objects.py), so you shouldn't have to do anything to get this step to work.

Manual check: Once you have run the create action, cehck the contents of the output directory manually to ensure it is okay.

If everything is okay, clear out the site folder, and copy the contents of output into site:

rm -fr site/*
cp -r output/* site/.

When that is finished, commit all changes to the gh-pages branch by committing the new contents of the site directory, probably something like this:

cd site
git add -A .
git commit -a -m 'update gh-pages branch'
git push origin gh-pages