YJL

1.1   For Last.fm

You will need to create a configuration file in ~/.lf-bash/config with these content:

APIKEY=YOUR_LASTFM_APIKEY
USERNAME=YOUR_LASTFM_USERNAME

For using Track.getinfo API, it’s required to supply API key. Since this is a Bash script, I don’t think it’s wise that I give you my API key even it’s not kind of secret key. You can apply for one. There are two things, I should tell you. First, I don’t have a key, either; Second, in that API page, there is an example link, just below the title. Take a look closer, I am sure you will understand why I want you to look at that link. Yes, I want you to see the response from Last.fm, not the parameters in that link. I swear! [finger crossed behind my back]

1.2   For Conky

The following is my own Conky code:

${if_running mpd}${color lightblue}MPD: ${color #408040}$mpd_status$color$alignr ${if_running mpdscribble}s$endif${if_match "$mpd_repeat" == "On"}r$endif${if_match "$mpd_random" == "On"}z$endif $mpd_vol%
${alignc}${color red}$mpd_title$color
${alignc}${color #9999ff}$mpd_album$color
${alignc}${color green}$mpd_artist$color
${alignc}${color yellow}Played <b>${execi 6 lf-playcount-image.sh}</b><b>${execi 6 cut -f 2 -d \  "/tmp/lf-playcount-image"}</b> times$color
[$mpd_elapsed/$mpd_length] ${color #ccddff}${mpd_bar 3,0}$color<b>${execpi 6 echo "\${image /tmp/lf-images/large.png -p 125,600 -s 200x200 -n -f 6}"}</b>${endif}

It looks like:

The first $execi is to let the script to update. It will get song info from MPD directly and use it to query on Last.fm. A cache file will be stored at /tmp/lf-playcount-image, it only gets updated when different song is played. In other words, if you play only one song repeatedly, the playcount will not be updated, this is a caveat.

The cache file will read:

a687c5e49a9740c93ae30eb38c8bc729 36 http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/64s/50562771.png http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/126/50562771.png http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/174s/50562771.png http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/300x300/50562771.png

First one is a hash for identify if it’s the same song. Second is the playcount, then small image URL, medium image URL, large image URL, and extra large image URL. They are space-separated values.

Once this script retrieves these information from Last.fm, it will also try to download those images to /tmp/lf-images/. That directory might look like:

% ll /tmp/lf-images/
total 700
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter   2374 May 20  2008 http:--cdn.last.fm-flatness-catalogue-album-jewelcase_large.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter   2081 May 20  2008 http:--cdn.last.fm-flatness-catalogue-album-jewelcase_medium.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter   1444 Jun 18  2009 http:--cdn.last.fm-flatness-catalogue-album-jewelcase_small.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter  33671 Aug 29 09:14 http:--userserve-ak.last.fm-serve-126-50562771.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter 162117 Aug 28 11:38 http:--userserve-ak.last.fm-serve-174s-50562771.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter 471950 Aug 29 09:14 http:--userserve-ak.last.fm-serve-300x300-50562771.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 livibetter livibetter   9718 Aug 21 23:53 http:--userserve-ak.last.fm-serve-64s-50562771.png
lrwxrwxrwx 1 livibetter livibetter     78 Aug 29 09:19 large.png -> /tmp/lf-images/http:--cdn.last.fm-flatness-catalogue-album-jewelcase_large.png
lrwxrwxrwx 1 livibetter livibetter     79 Aug 29 09:19 medium.png -> /tmp/lf-images/http:--cdn.last.fm-flatness-catalogue-album-jewelcase_medium.png
lrwxrwxrwx 1 livibetter livibetter     78 Aug 29 09:19 small.png -> /tmp/lf-images/http:--cdn.last.fm-flatness-catalogue-album-jewelcase_small.png

As you can see, it creates symbolic links, so you can always get the current song’s cover art at /tmp/lf-images/{small,large,medium,extralarge}.png. In the example above, there is no extra large image. The other files are cached, so this script won’t download multiple times for same image.

Second $execi is to get the playcount, it has nothing special if you know shell script.

The $execpi is to create a Conky $image variable, still nothing too special.