Audio Library / displaying mp3 metadata

mp3 authour, year, comments, etc -> XML?

[adkantoro]

I’m making an audio library on my site, with about 1000 mp3 files.

I need to describe each file with about 5 fields: duration, subject, date, comments, etc.

The simple but boring and error-prone way of doing this is just an HTML table.

However, since I can encapsulate the data within the mp3 files themselves (right-click > properties > summary), would it not be great if I could use that metadata to auto-generate the HTML for those fields?

I already found how to turn XML into HMTL tables with Javascript.

The questions is, is there a way to turn the metadata of an mp3 into XML?

Thanks

[Xmlx]

Depending on the server-side programming language of your choice, you should be able to dynamically read most of the file properties and write them to an XML file.

Of course, I haven't played with MP3 files before, so you might need some special 3rd party tools to get some of the properties like "duration".

If it were me, I'd have an XML file for each MP3 file, and while reading the directory contents, I'd loop on each MP3 file name and check if a matching XML file existed - if not, then read the finer properties and write the xml file for it. That way, you are not constantly scanning and writing property information.

I know my suggestion is vage and general, but hopefully it gets you going in the right direction.

Cheers....