espotify

Erlang wrapper for libspotify.

Current state

This library is experimental, and a work in progress. Its end goal is to cover the entire API of libspotify. The coverage so far:

• Playback of audio (uses native audio library; Alsa or Coreaudio)
• Browse album
• Browse artist
• Get playlist information
• Search tracks/artists/playlists
• Get image data (for artist portraits, covers)

The things missing are mostly playlist and playlist container management.

Installation and setup

First of all, you need a Spotify Premium account to use this library.

Download libspotify for your platform, and install it (on Linux / Mac, that would be something like make install prefix=/usr/local; see libspotify's README file for more info). Make sure the libspotify example programs compile (especially the jukebox one to play sound, as espotify uses the same libraries).

Next, generate a libspotify app key and download the resulting C-code, placing it in espotify's c_src/spotifyctl/appkey.c file.

That should be it! Now, from espotify's directory, rebar compile should compile the Erlang NIF library.

How to use

The library is highly asynchronous by nature. After most commands you need to wait for a response from spotify before you can issue the next, as you can see in the following example:

espotify_api:start(self(), "/tmp/espotify", "/tmp/espotify", "username", "password"),
receive
    {'$spotify_callback', logged_in, {ok, _User}} ->
        ok
end,
case espotify_api:player_load("spotify:track:6JEK0CvvjDjjMUBFoXShNZ") of
    loading -> % wait for track to load
        receive
            {'$spotify_callback', player_load, loaded} ->
                ok
        end;
    ok -> % already loaded
        ok
end,
espotify_api:player_play(true).

This logs you in to Spotify, waits for an 'ok' message from the library; load a track, wait for it to be loaded, and finally plays this track (in case you're wondering, it's "Never gonna give you up" by Rick Astley :P)

Running the tests

espotify comes with a bunch of CT test suites; to run it, create a test/app.config with your spotify credentials (copy test/app.config.in as example); and then run the tests:

rebar ct -v

If everything is OK, you should see the tests logging in to Spotify, playing a part of a song, etc.