Reload metadata for tracks when changed

[danielroehrig]

Describe what you want

I want that changes to the id3 tags are reflected in the database. For example, if I change the spelling of an artist in the id3 tags outside of termusic, I want to find the artist with the new spelling in the database. Ideally automatically, or with a "refresh" action, or if that's not possible, then on a restart.

Do you have already an idea for the implementation?

Look for update timestamps of the files in the database and on change reload the metadata.

[hasezoey]

We currently do not refresh files unless explicitly requested. Though there is currently no user-facing trigger to force a refresh.
We also currently dont really store any specific data for if a file has changed (like a hash of the contents or mtime).
I dont know what the proper approach would be, should we add a new field that tracks known mtime and try to update the track if changed, or should we just run the "try to update" globally(library refresh) on intervals (/ manual triggers)?

I didnt want to implement a custom-made menu for this and instead wanted to wait until "context menus" are introduced (also instead of having many key-bindings that many would likely not use or are obscure) and also wanted to wait for introducing a CLI option until #101 could actually get solved.

TL;DR: the only way currently to update the database is to clear the database of that entry manually (by deleting the database, or going into it with sqlite)

Any suggestions on how the user interface & interactions (menu / CLI options) should look / work?

[danielroehrig]

Saving the mtime in another column would work, but it would also mean that we'd have to scan the whole music library on disc and compare all changes and then overwrite the data if changes were detected. I would be happy to do something like ctrl+shift+r on the library and force a reload. What I would really love though would be an integrated tags editor. But that would also not solve the issue with external changes.

[hasezoey]

What I would really love though would be an integrated tags editor.

There is something that is called a "Tag Editor" already in termusic, though in my opinion it dosnt quite work how it should for a proper tag editor.

Personally i would still recommend to use something external like Picard for this job.

Saving the mtime in another column would work, but it would also mean that we'd have to scan the whole music library on disc and compare all changes and then overwrite the data if changes were detected

Yes, but storing mtime could be in addition to just forcing to always update metadata (which is currently the only option; still nothing makes use of it currently). We would need to scan the library in intervals anyway (unless we used watchers, but those would only work if something is modified while termusic is running).

To be on the same page, there could be multiple scan modes (inspiration taken from jellyfin):

• Scan for new files (currently the only option)
• Scan for new and updated files (which i would suggest, comparing with some kind of metric like mtime)
• Replace all metadata (currently the only "update" option, which is unused)

I would be happy to do something like ctrl+shift+r on the library and force a reload

Personally, i would rather not have a keybind for this and just a menu that it could be triggered explicitly.
Though it is possible, but i think using CTRL+SHIFT as a default is not really good as it is currently practically only used for global shortcuts, but i think this would only apply to the Library/File Manager part.
How about a CTRL+R to reload the currently selected path recursively?
(Alternatively there is F5, but for that i would rather expect the component reloads all paths instead of triggering a library/metadata scan)

Then there is still the matter of when to run the cleanup routine, which currently is also called nowhere. (This cleans up stale references and in the future should likely also delete tracks that dont exist on disk anymore)

[danielroehrig]

You could add a config option "rescan on startup" so that users can opt-in to having their files rescanned. If someone has a really large file base that could take a while. And also use CTRL+R with a confimation to do a rescan. That rescan would also include the cleanup process. I'm happy with anything, because I don't want to delete the database
everytime I change an entry. Especially since I would also loose my playlists.

[hasezoey]

You could add a config option "rescan on startup" so that users can opt-in to having their files rescanned

FYI, termusic, at least on latest master, always scans all music roots on startup; though that scan is "for new files" only, not for "changed files".

If someone has a really large file base that could take a while

Hence why i brought up the mtime comparison as a speed-up tool. (and maybe a "last time scanned" property, so that if termusic is like restarted in 10(or less) minutes, it does not try to re-scan everything again; maybe that could be configurable)

Especially since I would also loose my playlists.

Currently in termusic, the library database (which is still different from the podcast database), only stores metadata (ie cache), not playlists.