Well my Ampache Now Playing module for drupal is officially 100% done! Pending its approval at http://drupal.org you will be able to download and use it! This is my first big project in php/mysql so I’m really excited for it to be out there for people to use.

Once it gets approved i will dedicate a page here for it, but until then…

Features

The Ampache Now Playing Module can display, in a block, the current song you are listening to with Ampache, as well as its corresponding album art! The module takes the RSS now playing feed from Ampache, and uses that to display the current song, artist and album, as well as from what device you are streaming to, and what time you streamed it (started listening).

Next, you can put in your Ampache Credentials (username and password) to have the module automatically download the album art for the current song and display it in the block!

This module will also take care of any caching for you, meaning it will save what song you are currently listening to, and refresh that every X number of seconds, to avoid unnecessary connections to your Ampache installation. It will also store the album art locally in drupal to cut down in the amount of bandwidth used by this module!

You can see this module in action on the right side of my site (labeled Ampache Now Playing). I have it set up to show the last song I was listening to if I am not currently listening to anything. It can also be set up to display the words “Nothing Playing”, or even hide the block if nothing is playing!

This module is highly customizable and I can’t wait to get it approved and available for download on drupal website!

More to come…

Though this module is perfectly ready for release to the public, there is still more ideas that I want to incorporate into the module, more user customizable features that is.

Right now, you can click the album art and it will bring you to google, with the song information as the search string. I hope to change that in the future and make that a user customizable setting (ie, checkbox to make the album art a link).

Also, what I really want to do is incorporate jquery/ajax into the module, and make it so if you start listening to a different song on Ampache, your drupal website will update the block automatically without a refresh. Of course, this would be accompanied by a really cool animation of the album art!

So stay tuned for this modules release….

I am about 90% of the way done with my Ampache Now Playing drupal module! you can get a sneak peak of what it will look like on the right hand side of my website under the menu! I will be posting it to drupals website, making a youtube video going through the process of installing it and configuring it with your ampache installation (it’s not hard at all!), and telling ampache.org about it!

If you are unfamiliar with Ampache check it out at http://ampache.org! it’s an awesome and free way to catalog and access your music anywhere in the world! It’s PHP/SQL driven, and you can an install it on any computer with apache running. You can access it over the web or on your phone. I use my iPhone to stream my music using ampache, it’s perfect, check it out!

My buddy at http://lightsandshapes.com is also working on a Now Playing Ampache plug-in for wordpress!

I’m working on an ampache now playing drupal module! you can see a glimpse of the feautures I want it to have already on my site on the right hand side. I’m currently working on getting it to grab and cache album art from an ampache installation, but once that is all figured out it’ll be ready for release to the world! check back for updates!

ps, My friend at http://lightsandshapes.com is also working on an Ampache Now Playing plugin for wordpress, our release dates should be pretty close!