Recently I got a client that wanted to have new features and a different presentation of data from what was produced by a commercial product that runs in Windows. My initial assessment, for a web-based php/mysql application, may have underestimated the complexity of what was needed. The application serves as a Music catalog database for keeping track of one’s music collection along with details about the album, the musicians in the band and etc. He has a 30,000 song collection that he has compiled over some time.
There will need to be one component that allows for display and presentation of information from a database. I have skills in using Dreamweaver to create a php/mysql based display/presentation of data. So, this might save time with regard to coding. However, the second component requires that there be a music player and that various information be presented about the song currently playing, the name of the song, album, band, band members, etc.
Perhaps, it is not too complicated. I would use the same php code that displays various albums/songs and instead just select one song from the database and give that as an argument to player and use then display additional information about the current song playing.
Should I look for existing applications and see if they can be customized to use his existing database?
I also may need to convert the MS Access DB to MySQL. I think I have found an application that will do that.
I considered HTML5 and the ability to use local storage. I think that only one database is supported for that, which isn’t necessarily a problem. Otherwise I need web hosting that would not mind storing 200GB (yes gigabytes) of mp3 based data (songs in mp3 format). Some hosting providers offer unlimited hosting but they probably expect that most folks won’t use all that much.
Has anyone done anything like this? I don’t want to reinvent the wheel as it were if there are applications that do this. The only problem is with regard to how flexible they are in being able to import all the data fields that represent the information he has accumulated over the years. I cannot count on an existing application to have fields that exactly match the fields or data that he has been collecting. That’s the challenge in deciding whether to completely customize this from scratch or use another application but somehow port his data into the new database.
Any feedback is appreciated,
Thanks,
Bruce
Recently I got a client that wanted to have new features and a different
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Why do you think you need to use a hosted service to deliver “new features and a different presentation”? There’s nothing to stop you implementing this using a webserver running on the same machine as the browser (with the added benefit of making the service available on the local area network).
While it would be possible to implement the player using flash, why bother? Just make sure you’ve got functionality for retagging the mp3 files and send the details in the tags to the browser and let them pick their own player (while presenting more complete info in the web page).
Typing ‘PHP jukebox’ into google returns “about 20,700,000” results – have you had a look at any of them?