tchaik

README

Music organisation and streaming system

Tchaik is an open source music organisation and streaming system. The backend is written in Go, the frontend is built using React, Flux and PostCSS.

Features

• Automatic prefix grouping and enumeration detection (ideal for classical music: properly groups big works together).
• Multiplatform web-based UI and REST-like API for controlling player.
• Multiple storage and caching options: Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, local and remote file stores.
• Import music library from iTunes or build from directory-tree of audio tracks.

Requirements

• Go 1.4+ (recent changes have only been tested on 1.5).
• NodeJS, NPM and Gulp installed globally (for building the UI).
• Recent version of Chrome (Firefox may also work, though hasn't been fully tested).

Building

If you haven't setup Go before, you need to first set a GOPATH (see https://golang.org/doc/code.html#GOPATH).

To fetch and build the code for Tchaik:

$ go get tchaik.com/cmd/...

This will fetch the code and build the command line tools into $GOPATH/bin (assumed to be in your PATH already).

Building the UI:

$ cd $GOPATH/src/tchaik.com/cmd/tchaik/ui
$ npm install
$ gulp

Alternatively, if you want the JS and CSS to be recompiled and have the browser refreshed as you change the source files:

$ WS_URL="ws://localhost:8080/socket" gulp serve

Then browse to http://localhost:3000/ to use tchaik.

Starting the UI

To start Tchaik you first need to move into the cmd/tchaik directory:

$ cd $GOPATH/src/tchaik.com/cmd/tchaik

Importing an iTunes Library

The easiest way to begin is to build a Tchaik library on-the-fly and start the UI in one command:

$ tchaik -itlXML ~/path/to/iTunesLibrary.xml

You can also convert the iTunes Library into a Tchaik library using the tchimport tool:

$ tchimport -itlXML ~/path/to/iTunesLibrary.xml -out lib.tch
$ tchaik -lib lib.tch

NB: A Tchaik library will generally be smaller than its corresponding iTunes Library. Tchaik libraries are stored as gzipped-JSON (rather than Apple plist) and contain a subset of the metadata used by iTunes.

Importing Audio Files

Alternatively you can build a Tchaik library on-the-fly from a directory-tree of audio files. Only files with supported metadata (see github.com/dhowden/tag) will be included in the index:

$ tchaik -path /all/my/music

To avoid rescanning your entire collection every time you restart, you can build a Tchaik library using the tchimport tool:

$ tchimport -path /all/my/music -out lib.tch
$ tchaik -lib lib.tch

More Advanced Options

A full list of command line options is available from the --help flag:

$ tchaik --help
Usage of tchaik:
  -add-path-prefix prefix
    	add prefix to every path
  -artwork-cache path
    	path to local artwork cache (content addressable)
  -auth-password password
    	password to use for HTTP authentication
  -auth-user user
    	user to use for HTTP authentication (set to enable)
  -checklist file
    	checklist file (default "checklist.json")
  -cursors file
    	cursors file (default "cursors.json")
  -debug
    	print debugging information
  -favourites file
    	favourites file (default "favourites.json")
  -itlXML file
    	iTunes Library XML file
  -lib file
    	Tchaik library file
  -listen address
    	bind address for main HTTP server (default "localhost:8080")
  -local-store path
    	path to local media store (prefixes all paths) (default "/")
  -media-cache path
    	path to local media cache
  -path directory
    	directory containing music files
  -play-history file
    	play history file (default "history.json")
  -playlists file
    	playlists file (default "playlists.json")
  -remote-store address
    	address for remote media store: tchstore server <host>:<port>, s3://<region>:<bucket>/path/to/root for S3, or gs://<bucket>/path/to/root for Google Cloud Storage
  -tls-cert file
    	certificate file, must also specify -tls-key
  -tls-key file
    	certificate key file, must also specify -tls-cert
  -trace-listen address
    	bind address for trace HTTP server
  -trim-path-prefix prefix
    	remove prefix from every path
  -ui-dir directory
    	UI asset directory (default "ui")

-local-store

Set -local-store to the local path that contains your media files. You can use trim-path-prefix and add-path-prefix to rewrite paths used in the Tchaik library so that file locations can still be correctly resolved.

-remote-store

Set -remote-store to the URI of a running tchstore server (hostname:port). Instead, S3 paths can be used: s3://<region>:<bucket>/path/to/root (set the environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY to pass credentials to the S3 client), or Google Cloud Storage paths: gs://<bucket>/path/to/root (set environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to point to the JSON credentials file).

-media-cache

Set -media-cache to cache all files loaded from -remote-store (or -local-store if set).

-artwork-cache

Set -artwork-cache to create/use a content addressable filesystem for track artwork. An index file will be created in the path on first use. The folder should initially be empty to ensure that no other files interfere with the system.

-trace-listen

Set -trace-listen to a suitable bind address (i.e. localhost:4040) to start an HTTP server which defines the /debug/requests endpoint used to inspect server requests. Currently we only support tracing for media (track/artwork/icon) requests. See https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/net/trace for more details.

Windows Support

The default value for parameter -local-store is / which does not work on Windows. When all library music is organised under a common path you can set -local-store and -trim-path-prefix to get around this (for instance -local-store C:\Path\To\Music -trim-path-prefix C:\Path\To\Music).

Get Involved!

Development is on-going and the codebase is changing very quickly. If you're interested in contributing then it's safest to jump into our gitter room and chat to people before getting started!