Query album flexible attribute and get a list of tracks?

Help
#1

Hello!

For flexible attributes set on albums, can I still query them to get a list of tracks?

For instance, I have started adding my personal rating of albums to a flexible attribute called albumrating. It made sense to me to use this field. So I can now get a list of albums with certain ratings using beet ls -a albumrating:2 for instance. I would like to use the same flexible attribute to get a list of tracks to output to a playlist.

Though upon reading this reply it does seem like what I’m wanting to do would require the flexattr albumrating to be set for each track, on reading this note:

What would be the best way to be able to generate playlists based on my albumrating flexattr? To just rate the items instead? :wink:

#2

I believe this PR does what you want?

It’s a great PR and I am (or rather the community is) delinquent on reviewing and merging it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#3

It looks like this is what I’m after, yes! Thanks for pointing it out, I was negligent in searching the issues before posting. I wish I could help, I am however entirely code-illiterate. For now I have a few (manual) work-arounds. :slight_smile:

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#4

I see that this PR was merged - great work to everyone involved! :slight_smile:

Currently, I am installing/updating beets from the Arch Linux AUR. I assume this version should include the merged PR? The version information I see is the following:
aur/beets-git 1.4.9.r1031.ee0467e-1 [+22 ~0.08] [Installed: 1.4.9.r1140.gc4347960-1]

Or should I maybe follow the instructions in the FAQ?

So, the reason I’m asking is that the fallback doesn’t seem to work for me.
beet ls -a album_flexible_attribute:something works, but no results for beet ls album_flexible_attribute:something.

#5

I just tested c4347960 (current master branch as of this writing) and the fallback is working with my library. I don’t use/know Arch, but the version string 1.4.9.r1140.gc4347960-1 does suggest to me that it’s using the same version I tested, since c4347960 is part of it. Still: maybe your beets executable isn’t actually that version? What does beet --version say? It should say 1.5.0. Also check which beet.

The way I have installed beets on my system is:

git clone git://github.com/beetbox/beets
cd beets
pip install -e .

while in a virtual environment. (I use conda, but virtualenv would also work.)

You can also ask python which beets-related paths it’s using:

python -c 'import sys; print([p for p in sys.path if "beets" in p])'

If the paths don’t match your expectations, that would suggest the wrong version of beets is being used.

#6

Thanks for your reply and your help! How is the fallback working for you? It’s possible I’m using it the wrong way. For Album flexible attributes I have albumrating. When querying using beet ls -a year:2020 albumrating:1..5 it’ll list the albums I’m looking for. If I omit -a there is no output, and I would’ve expected the fallback to be listing the tracks for the albums with albumrating:1..5. Am I understanding the intended functionality correctly?

╰─❯ beet version
beets version 1.5.0
Python version 3.9.2
plugins: edit, fetchart, importadded, importfeeds, info, inline, lastimport, mbcollection, mbsync, mpdstats, mpdupdate, originquery, playlist, scrub, smartplaylist, types, zero

╰─❯ which beet
/home/pandatroubles/.local/bin/beet

╰─❯ python -c 'import sys; print([p for p in sys.path if "beets" in p])'
[]
#7

@pandatroubles Hmm… just speculation, but perhaps this new feature isn’t interacting well with the types plugin? I assume you have albumrating declared as an int so that the 1..5 works? Does it work for you with string-based flexible attributes? I’ve only tested it with strings on my system.

Another difference I see is that I’m using python 3.8.6. It’s possible 3.9 breaks behavior somehow. You could try with Python 3.8 just to rule that out.

#8

I had no idea what you meant by this, so I was about to set up a virtual machine to test it out. Instead I did manage to set up a virtualenv on my main machine to test this, and it works as intended.

╰─❯ /home/boredpanda/beets-test/beets/beet --version                    
beets version 1.5.0
Python version 3.8.8
plugins: edit, importadded, importfeeds, info, inline, mbcollection, mbsync, mpdupdate, playlist, scrub, smartplaylist, types, zero

And I used your installation method.

git clone git://github.com/beetbox/beets
cd beets
pip install -e .

It actually seems like the version of beet that I’m using, is the wrong one. I’ll try and remove beet from my system and re-install.

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