Question

According to the Spotify API, I can use the Library object to obtain an array of all of the albums that a user has in their library. However, when I enter the following preliminary code:

var sp = getSpotifyApi(1);
var models = sp.require("sp://import/scripts/api/models");
var userlib = models.library;

followed by a call to the albums attribute:

document.write(userlib.albums);

I get nothing, presumably because the albums attribute is undefined. If I try it on the other attributes listed in Spotify’s documentation, including .artists and .tracks, it does exactly what it should: lists every artist/track included in the user’s library. Any Spotify experts have an idea as to why this album functionality isn’t present and where it might be?

Answer 1

There is an obscure, undocumented way to grab an array of all of the albums in a user’s library that I found after a lot of aimless searching. After the initial call to Spotify’s API, usually done like this:

var sp = getSpotifyApi(1);

you can then make this call:

var albums = sp.core.library.getAlbums();

returning an array of Album objects in the user’s library. You can access the methods and attributes spelled out in the Documentation’s Album object.

I don’t know if this is some kind of hold over from an older version of Spotify’s API, but I hope it sticks around or they replace it with something better. Albums as a piece of data are still very important to many listeners, as much as Spotify seems to want to erode them with Playlists.