Metal-archives to org-agenda package

melpa information:

The goal of this package is to generate an org-file for the upcoming releases given by metal-archives.

Dependencies

This package depends on the following packages:

• request
• json
• ht
• alert
• org-mode
• org-ml https://github.com/ndwarshuis/org-ml

How to install

The minimum recipe using melpa is the following one:

(use-package metal-archives :ensure t)

Entry points

This packages provide four interactive functions:

• metal-archives-retrieve-next-releases: synchronize the database of the upcoming releases
• metal-archives-org-generate-org-from-db: generates an org file containing all the upcoming releases (see here)
• metal-archives-load-artists-map: load the database of favorite artists
• metal-archives-shopping-list-update: update the shopping list of the upcoming releases for the favorite artists (see here)

Favorite artists

A management of favorite artists is implemented in the package. It consists of two parts:

1. a database of favorite artits
2. an handle which triggers a specific action when a release from the favorite artist is spotted.

The database is a hash table where the key of the element is the artist name and the value the priority stored in the alert format (the incremental priority list: trivial, low, normal, moderate, high, urgent). The variable metal-archives-artists-map-filename defines the database file. This file is assumed to be a Tab Separated Value (TSV) file containing two columns (artist, priority). The helper metal-archives-load-artists-map is provided to load this database. The helper metal-archives-save-artists-map can be used to also save the updated database into the database file A final helper is metal-archives-scan-music-directory is provided to extract the artist names from the music directory (identified by the customizable variable metal-archives-music-root-dir). It is assumed that the music directory first level subdirectories are the artist names.

The handle is defined by metal-archives-favorite-handle. By default, it is set to metal-archives-favorite-alert. Of course this handle can be customized.

Provided extended features

This package provides two extended features: an org interface and a shopping list management.

Org interface

This is defined in the file metal-archives-org.el.

The org interface provides a convenient to generate a org file containing all the upcoming releases. This file could be added in the org-agenda file list to monitor the releases

The org interface is controlled by:

• the variable metal-archives-org-target-file which defines the file where all the upcoming releases;
• the variable metal-archives-org-template which defines the template to represent a release node;
• the function metal-archives-org-generate-org-from-db which is filling the metal-archives-org-target-file from the already synchronized release database.

Shopping list

melpa information:

This is defined in the file metal-archives-shopping-list.el.

The shopping list management is a refinement of the org interface. The idea of this extension is to provide a convenient way to store in a shopping list only releases of selected artits.

The shopping list management is controlled by:

• the variable metal-archives-shopping-list-target-file which defines the file where the shopping list is stored;
• the variable metal-archives-shopping-list-root-node which defines the title of the root node containing the shopping list;
• the function metal-archives-shopping-list-update which updates the shopping list using a database (stored in metal-archives-shopping-list-release-to-flush) previously populated.

The variable metal-archives-shopping-list-release-to-flush is a list of releases as defined in the structure metal-archives-entry from metal-archives.el.

For perfomance constrained, it is advises to select a dedicated shopping list target file as the whole file is currently parsed.

Finally, to simplify the population of the shopping list, a hook as been defined and can be set to the metal-archives-favorite-handle. This hook is named metal-archives-shopping-list-add-release-and-alert

Setup example

A close setup to what I am using is the following:

(use-package metal-archives-shopping-list
  :ensure t
  :commands (metal-archives-shopping-list-update)
  :hook
  (kill-emacs . metal-archives-shopping-list-update)
  (after-init . metal-archives-load-artists-map)

  :init
  (add-to-list 'org-agenda-files metal-archives-shopping-list-target-file)

  :config
  (setq metal-archives-favorite-handle 'metal-archives-shopping-list-add-release-and-alert))