iPod and iTunes Hacks

Use Java to Expand iTunes Functionality

MyTunes is an easy-to-use and extensible framework you can use to build upon iTunes’ built-in functionality. With a little help from Java, you can even run iTunes remotely from another machine.

AppleScript fans have had hooks in iTunes for several years, which makes the information in your music library accessible to other scriptable applications. And while AppleScript can be glued together with other components in OS X (in the Terminal, via the /usr/bin/osascript command and AppleScript’s do shell script command), attempting to provide your music information to nonscriptable applications or resources (e.g., a web site powered by PHP and MySQL) has traditionally been done in hack-and-scratch ways.

MyTunes fills that void by providing an easy-to-use and extensible frame-work that allows you to access and manipulate your iTunes library via Java. This hack introduces you to MyTunes and describes the basic concepts of how and why it works the way it does.

Introducing MyTunes

MyTunes has been around for several years in a previous form. It was originally an AppleScript that created an XML-ish file from the iTunes library, which was then parsed by a Perl script to load into a MySQL database (hence the name: MySQL + iTunes = MyTunes).

However, iTunes Version 4 creates a file called iTunes Music Library.xml in your music library folder, so the first ...