Playlist Numbering incompatibilty

[Wolksby]

Hi, I use the recommended third-party app, Playlist Manager, to produce random playlists which I can then access via Poweramp itself.

The problem I have is that while the playlists appear as My Playlist 1, 2 , 3. etc in Playlist Manager, when accessing those same playlists in Poweramp, their numbering is wrong, and they appear as 1, 10, 100, 101 etc. I contacted Theo Kink who designed the Playlist Manager app, who replied:

'the playlist name is just a text string and will be sorted according to those rules that apply to text.

 What I did to get them in the correct order is sort by create time

public String playlistmtime = "playlists.mtime as create_time";

the mtime part is an actual column in the Poweramp database so this should be very easy to fix in Poweramp.

Try and post this on the forum and see if there is any interest from the developer or Poweramp users

 

If there is anyone who can offer any help, I'd be very grateful! It's way beyond my pay-grade!

[andrewilley]

Playlist names are just text fields, Playlist manager should be able to pass them back verbatim to Poweramp's database. Does this only happen with trailing numbers in playlist names? (e.g. if you named them My Playlist A, My Playlist B, My Playlist C, etc does it work correctly?

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@andrewilley the point here is that playlists get created with 1,2,3 appended to the name. the sorting for these strings does not follow numeric sorting rules hence my solution to sort by creation time. This way they will always be in the exptected order in my app Music Playlist Manager. However, viewed in Poweramp  they will show as the sorted example

 

for example

playlist 1

playlist 2

playlist 3

playlist 4

playlist 5

playlist 6

playlist 7

playlist 8

playlist 9

playlist10

playlist 11

 

when sorted gives

playlist 1

playlist 10

playlist 11

playlist 2

playlist 3

playlist 4

playlist 5 etc

[andrewilley]

Ah, gotcha, I thought the issue was titles not copying over verbatim.

Yes, playlist sorting in PA is like all the other alpha-numeric sorting options, which use literal character-by-character ASCII codes rather than applying any reinterpretation of multiple consecutive numeric digits.

The answer, as with naming filenames and folders, is to use pre-padding zero digits - so My Playlist 001, My Playlist 002, My Playlist 010, My Playlist 100, etc,   

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@Wolksby i just checked and Poweramp itself has a sort option by date added. Once you select this option, sorting will be ok

[Wolksby]

Hi,

Could you just talk me through what you have suggested?

Do I firstly make my random 200 selection of playlists. Can I still call them My Playlist: 1 or should write 001?

When Playlist Manager has selected the playlists, and I look at them in Poweramp, do I simply sort them by date added, and then the way they appeared in Playlist Manager will be the same now in Poweramp. I tried it with a few playlists, but the 'by date' option didn't seem to change how they were named in Poweramp.

I expect I'm missing something obvious!

 

[andrewilley]

My suggestion of using fixed digit numbers (001, 002, 010, 100 rather than 1, 2, 10, 100) for names was so you could use 'By Name' sorting within Poweramp, the same as you'd do with track numbers in filenames for example. That is assuming that the playlist names that you are seeing in Poweramp are the exact same strings that you created in Playlist Manager.

Theo's suggest for using 'By Date Added' sorting in Poweramp was so you'd see your most recently added content first, regardless of the names.

Andre 

[flyingdutchman]

@Wolksby it appears i was mistaken. I assumed Date added would use the column I mentioned above.

[Wolksby]

Hi Andre,

I remade a set of Playlists in Playlist Manager, and then took a look at them in Poweramp. They still appear in the 'computer'-numbered sequence, even when I click to sort By Name. Given the Playlist naming screen in PM, I wasn't sure how to get the original playlists numbered as My Playlist: 001, rather than My Playlist: 1

Where am I still going wrong?

[andrewilley]

@Wolksby So if you create several playlists named:

My Playlist 001
My Playlist 002
My Playlist 010
My Playlist 011
My Playlist 020
My Playlist 100
My Playlist 200

What order do they show as in Poweramp when sorted 'By Name'? They should show as above, in order. Alphanumeric sorting treats each character as an individual item, so it does not understand the human numbering concept of counting with 1, 2, 10, 11, 100, 200. Without using those leading zeros, any characters 1xxxx (such as 1, 10, 11, 100) come before 2xxxx (such as 2, 20, 200).

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@andrewilley @Wolksby , the approach suggested by Andre works. I have amended the code to pad with zeros to create a 3 digit number (which is then transformed into a string)

[Wolksby]

Do I have to wait to download an updated version of the app, in order for it to work? Since your latest communication, I tried again, but with the same result.

Or should I be setting up the Playlist name to force this to happen?

Many thanks, and always much appreciated!

[flyingdutchman]

@Wolksby yes, you will need an updated version. I have published it but it is still in review. My last skin release took 5 days but sometimes it is just hours

[Wolksby]

Many thanks for letting me know!

I'll keep an eye out for it. Thank you again for all your efforts on my behalf.

You provide such a wonderful 'bespoke' service, tailored to the individual!