labs | php

Line-out scrobbler

2011-06-30 13:36:08

for years i’ve been trying to hijack music recognition services like shahzam to be able to recognize music. i’ve finally got this working thanks to the fine guys at echonest, who kindly provide a proper api for this. my proof of concept is running on a spare macbook.

here’s how it works on the mac atm:
1. the os x automator runs in a 90 second loop, recording audio with quicktime and then running a cli php script.
2. the php script first converts the recorded .mov file to .mp3 with ffmpeg/lame
3. the php script then runs the echonest binary for music fingerprinting, which generates a json string
4. part of the json string is sent via curl to the echonest service and (hopefully) resolved
5. echonest returns artist, title and a unique id. this id is saved i a recent-log so that the php script can skip a run if it runs 2 times during the same song
6. artist and title are curled back to our lamp-server, where we save all plays in a database (mongodb atm)
7. artist and title can then be sent to any service you wish to interact with

making this projekt was pretty straight forward, except for a minor obstacle which took me a few hours to figure out. it turns out that the echonest binary calls ffmpeg internally, and for some reason automator couldn’t find ffmpeg in it’s $PATH. when i realized this the fix was done in a second, i just needed to make a symlink from the $PATH automator used to where i had ffmpeg locally.

next step: will try this a few days and see how well it performs. if it’s good enough i’ll buy a tiny linux box and give it a pair of rca jacks.

links:
the earth people account on last.fm which we scrobble vinyl to atm
the awesome echonest service

/ peder fjällström

Tags: echonest, ffmpeg, lastfm, music, php, scrobbler | Hacks

NOW On Roskilde

2011-06-06 10:00:30

Now On Roskilde is a mobile application which users easily can add to their homescreen.
It shows what’s on right now, together with related artists playing in the near future.

Since nothing is playing right now (+ the correct feed hasn’t been published yet), the app is pretty worthless at the moment. There is a way to get a preview though, by adding a querystring to the url. These urls below will fetch the Roskilde data feed from 2010.

# thu, july 1st 2010, 19:43
http://nowonroskilde.com/?timestamp=1278013434

# fri, july 2st 2010, 19:43
http://nowonroskilde.com/?timestamp=1278017704

nowonroskilde.com by Earth People is a quick hack put together for the Roskilde Labs competition. Also, feel free to use the php class we put together for this.

/ peder fjällström

Tags: hack, iphone, mobile, music, php, roskilde, webapp | Apps, Hacks

CodeIgniter development site – on live environment

2010-10-23 14:25:39

We recently had to set up a development site for an existing CodeIgniter site, and we wanted to do this effortless. Ideal would obviously be to have a separate virtual domain or a separate box but hey, “ideal” isn’t always ideal, heh.

By applying the same principle as in our previous WordPress article on the same topic, this is done in well under 5 minutes. Upload the same /dev folder as in the WordPress case, and make the following modification in the main CodeIgniter index.php file.

Change this:

$system_folder = "system";

to:

if(isset($_COOKIE["dev"])){
	$system_folder = "sysdev";
}else{
	$system_folder = "system";
}

Then copy the /system directory to /sysdev – and that will be your new development docroot. Once you’re ready to release your next version, either copy each file from /sysdev to /system – or simply change the name of /system to /system-OLD and /sysdev to /system.

/ peder fjällström

Tags: ci, codeigniter, development, php | CodeIgniter

html5 validation with(!) facebook opengraph

2010-09-17 22:27:22

html5 is that new, cool(?) technology which you should(?) be using when making new sites. but, being the thorough developer you are – it just eats you up from the inside when your brand new html5 website won’t validate because your client decided to add a facebook like button.

the facebook open graph protocol/namespace/api/whatever which was released in spring 2010 will only validate with an xhtml doctype. if you want to work in a html5 doctype and use opengraph, you need to apply a little bit of server logic. have a look at this, i won’t bother explaining the source code, i think you’ll get it.

<?php
function is_facebook(){
if(!(stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],’facebook’) === FALSE))
return true;
}
}
?><!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir=”ltr” lang=”en-US”<?php if(is_facebook()){echo ‘ xmlns:fb=”http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml” xmlns:og=”http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/”‘;}?>>
<head>
<title><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></title>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />

<?php if(is_facebook()){?>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”<?php echo $title;?>”/>
<meta property=”og:description” content=”<?php echo $description;?>”/>
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article”/>
<meta property=”og:image” content=”<?=$path_to_page_thumbnail?>”/>
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://<?php echo $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];?>”/>
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”<?=$the_name_of_the_site?>”/>
<meta property=”fb:appid” content=”<?=$your_fb_app_id?>”/>
<?php }?>

one thing to have in mind is that page level caching is a no go if you apply this tactic. if your cache is clever, you could possibly make an exception for the facebook user agent, delivering fresh content to facebook on all requests.

oh well, it’s just a thought. let me know if i missed something.

/ peder fjällström

Tags: facebook, html5, opengraph, php | Hacks, Scripts, Wordpress

php class for ffmpeg

2010-04-03 18:10:16

i’ve had a few projects over the last years where i’ve needed to convert some video file to flv, generate a thumbnail and get the video’s duration. i’ve never really got around to wrapping this into something reusable. but here it is, get it if you need it.

you’ll also need a non-windows server with ffmpeg installed, and if you need compability with any non-standard formats (3gp/mp3/etc) you need to install these as well. i won”t go into detail about how this is done, just google it.

when ffmpeg is correctly installed on your box, use this class like this:

$encoder = new videoencoder();
$thumbnail = $encoder->export_thumb("yourfile.mp4");
$duration = $encoder->get_duration("yourfile.mp4");
$videofile = $encoder->export_video("yourfile.mp4");

ok i know it’s better to use a service for this, like the excellent encoding.com – but hey, this is more fun – and really fast! also, worth noting is that while ffmpeg happily converts your files to flv, it will use the old “spark” codec for flash videos, instead of the newer and slightly better codec “on2″ due to licensing issues. you can however use mp4 files with recent versions of flash player, which ffmpeg can convert to. use mp4 instead if you worry about video quality (which i guess you should…).

download my php class here.

/ peder fjällström

Tags: encoding, ffmpeg, flv, media, mp4, php | Scripts

battleships – with real ships!

2009-11-27 10:54:42

someone on twitter passed on a link to a site where one could track 11000 ships, live on a map. excited about the vast chunk of scrapable data i started chatting to my buddy tnobs about this, and we came up with a fun hack… but who’s got time to hack stuff for fun? well, i got way too excited and started right away. at the end of play the same day – this battleship inspired game was live.

the idea is pretty simple – select weapon and click anywhere on the world map. if you’re lucky you’ll hit a ship. much like the old battleship board game, with two exceptions. it’s based on real data – the ships are real ships, on the seven seas of the world. and this “game” lack all the drama of a real game… try it here!

well, i can’t see that i’ll be hacking away any further on this project, it was a fun proof of concept and i learnt a little. if you get any great ideas on how to hack this into something usable, email me.

/ peder fjällström

Tags: api, googlemaps, jquery, php | Hacks