Just List Artists or Album Artists & Just List Albums

[tmf]

There were a couple of older add-ons for MMW4 called 'Just list Artists' and 'Just List Albums' that I found quite useful from time to time. MM2024 has a report list, but it gives you all files and I don't see any way to limit it to anything less. Is there an updated version of these or similar in MMW2024 or at least some way to create lists like these?

Thanks

[IanRTaylorUK]

SELECT DISTINCT Artist FROM Artists ORDER BY Artist COLLATE NOCASE;

SELECT DISTINCT Album, Artist FROM Albums ORDER BY Album COLLATE NOCASE;

After installing the SQL Editor 1.0.2 addon, paste the SQL and Execute

https://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/brow ... ql-editor/

[tmf]

Thanks Ian,

That's a nice looking add-on, but the only thing I know about SQL is MM uses it for the database. Although your provided queries did help and worked to create both lists as described. I'll do some more study and fiddling and see what happens. But, I didn't see any way to save the output, which is what the MM4 scripts did, and I was really hoping for.

The scripts from MM4, exported a list of Artists to a text file that you could save and compare to your actual Artist data. The Albums script did the same for Albums. The scripts could be edited allowing you to add certain additional fields or add field separators for export to a CSV file for import to another program for other/further manipulation.

Probably way over my head, but if nothing ready made shows up, I might look into possibly converting the MM4 scripts? I know the MM developers have created something to help convert the MM4 scripts. I'd probably be stuck if it didn't 'Auto-Convert',
as I didn't fully understand the MM4 scripts, only how to edit a few things. That info came from the authors comments and thread posted here on the forum about it's creation and revisions.

[IanRTaylorUK]

Preparation
1). Install DB Browser for SQLite from https://sqlitebrowser.org/
2). Back-up your Media Monkey 5 database (mm5.db) to a folder (E:\MMW5Temp\ in my case) using the inbuilt option
3). Open the ZIP file (MM_YearMonthDayTime.zip) created by the backup
4). Extract the mm5.db file into your folder.
These steps provide you with a backup of your database and a copy that you can work on safely without any impact to your MMW5 installation!

a). Run DB Browser for SQL Lite and open E:\MMW5Temp\MM5.DB
b). Using the Database Structure Tab, select the "Table" you want to export i.e. Albums or Artists
c). Right Click to export a CSV file of the table using typically comma as the field separator, quotes for characters and CR+LF for a new record. Choose Save then set the location i.e. E:\MMW5Temp and filename i.e. Artist.csv or Albums.csv
d). Click OK when the save / export has been confirmed.
You now have files for the MMW5 database tables in a format suitable for Excel or Access or your chosen spreadsheet or database program.

i). Normally a double click on the CSV file will open it in Excel in the first sheet of the workbook labelled as the file / table name
ii). Add a new worksheet to the workbook and use Data / Get Data / From File / From Text CSV and select import
You now have - for example - your Artists and Albums in a single spreadsheet workbook as two separate sheets. Notice that the second approach to importing often does a better job of the import!

You will probably want to ignore ID columns!

Perhaps once a month or so, clear out the Temp folder

[tmf]

Thanks much for the detailed instructions on DB Browser and it's use. This looks promising, more like something I can handle. I'll definitely be giving it a try, following your instructions here.

Years ago I previously dabbled a bit in Alpha4 (DOS) and Filemaker (Windows) so this sounds much more doable than creating or converting MM4/MM5 scripts.

FWIW, I did look at the script conversion add-on last night. It did do a conversion and seemed to work well. However the conversion code was still over my head so I haven't tried to use it. For someone with more of a programming background I imagine it would be a quite useful.

Thanks again for the instructions!

[IanRTaylorUK]

Hi, I think you are correct in your assessment that script writing and script conversion will involve many more hours of learning and experience than - for example:

1). DB Browser for SQLite to look into the 50+ tables used in MMW5
2). Using the MMW5 CSV exports into a Spreadsheet or Database
3). Using a combination of MMW4 (with all it various add-ons) and MMW5 [and keeping / running two version of Media Monkey with an approach to synchronise or share the library files)

I you were to decide to look into scripts, I would suggest starting with:
https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=81285
and
https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index. ... d_Post_5.0
plus the various links therein.

Hope this helps.

[tmf]

The DB Browser works just fine for what I was wanting to do. That should tide me along for a while until I dream up something else that can't be easily done.

I will check these links to creating scripts, that does sound interesting. The DB Browser is good for now and it IS much easier than struggling with scripts. Not to mention extremely less time consuming!

I still use MM4 for some things, mostly for tag manipulation with Zvezdan's excellent RegExp add-on. I have even managed to butcher a couple of Zvezdan's pre-defined tasks to do something a bit more specific to my needs. Starting a new task from scratch is a bit above my comfort level, better left to the pros for those.

Thanks for all your help!