Inline plugin: How to use track details in album field calculations?

[halloleo]

I am using the inline plugin (thanks to @DjSlash!) to create a field $albumcomposer. The field function tries to read the $composer field (of the album!) and checks whether it consists of multiple names:

album_fields:
  albumcomposer: |
    try:
      cmpr = composer
      if len(cmpr.split(";")) > 1:
        cmpr = "MultipleComposers"
      except NameError:
        cmpr = "Unknown"
    return cmpr

In case the album itself has no $composer field, the function falls back to teh string "Unknown". But it would be better if in this case the function looks at the tracks of the album and the composers listed there.

How can I do this? Any idea?

Many thanks for any pointers!

[DjSlash]

I'm pretty sure albums don't have $composer to start with. That's why I had it in item_fields earlier.

[halloleo]

But the $composer of a track will always have only one composer name - there is no list of composer names to split...

[DjSlash]

The probability that a track has only one composer is very likely, I guess that specially goes with real classical music. Also, not every track in an album may have the same composer.

An example:

]$ beet ls -f '$artist | $album |  $title | $composer' genre:classical |grep Piano  
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Titanium / Pavane | Gabriel Fauré, David Guetta, Sia, Giorgio Tuinfort, Nick van de Wall
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Peponi (Paradise) | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Code Name Vivaldi | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Beethoven's 5 Secrets | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Over the Rainbow / Simple Gifts | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Cello Wars | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Arwen's Vigil | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Moonlight | Ludwig van Beethoven, Steven Sharp Nelson, Al van der Beek
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  A Thousand Years | Christina Perri
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Michael Meets Mozart | Steven Sharp Nelson, Jon Schmidt, Al van der Beek
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  The Cello Song | Johann Sebastian Bach, Steven Sharp Nelson, Al van der Beek
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  Rolling in the Deep | 
The Piano Guys | The Piano Guys |  What Makes You Beautiful | 

You can see here that there are tracks without composer, with one composer and also multiple composers.

[halloleo]

Thanks for sticking with this @DjSlash !

Yes, tracks can have multiple or no composer, but mostly they will have one composer (particularly for classical works).

If then all tracks of the same album have the same composer, I would like to set the new albumcomposer field to this one composer. If all tracks of the same album together have various composer names, I want to set this field to "MultipleComposers". (So in your example of the album "The Piano Guys" I want to set the album composer field to "MultipleComposers".)

But for all of this I need to access during the album field calculation of albumcomposer the composer field of the tracks of the album in question.

Is this possible in beets? Can the inline plugin do it?

[DjSlash]

Looking at the documentation of inline plugin, I think it is possible.

Something in the likes of:

album_fields:
    albumcomposers: |
        # sets do not allow duplicates
        c_set = set()
        for item in items:
            c_set.update(item.composer.split("; "))
        return c_set
   multicomposer: 1 if len(albumcomposers) > 0 else 0

Note: I'm not fluent in python, be aware that you need to test this before unleashing it on your whole collection.

[halloleo]

Super-thanks for this. The calculation for albumcomposers works! 😄

I had no idea that I can access the tracks as items in the definition of calculated album fields.. That is fantabulous!