Good way to get a song entry via AJAX (XmlHTTPRequest)

[Broken One 0]

Hi there,

is there any kind of hidden API or whatever to more easily get a and search a specific song by artist and title?

I would like to use a XmlHTTPRequest to get the songfacts and incorparate them into last.fm via greasemonkey.

Greets,

Broken One

[Farin 2]

I'm not sure if that's possible,

but I would like it very much if it is

[Wyld Card 5]

That's what I was thinking, it sounds very complicated to do though. But it would be nice.

[Carl 21]

I speak some geek, but I'm a little lost on this one. Can you show me something that uses this so I can get a visual?

[Farin 2]

Greasemonkey is a Firefox Addon that lets you customize small bits of how a website is displayed, or add certain functions to it

and as I understand it, he wants to write a script so that Songfacts are displayed (or a link to them) on the track pages on last.fm

[Broken One 0]

Exactly, what I'm trying to do is to incorparate those songfacts dynamically into the HTML of last.fm.

If none are given I will place a link so you can add them or comment on the song.

At the moment I can get a detail page via 2 seperate XmlHttpRequests. Worse I have to use regular expressions to parse the HTML I get.

This would be easier if there would be some kind of API that takes an artist and a track and returns some XML document. So my question is if there is any better way or hidden way to query the songfacts database.

Greets,

Broken One

[Broken One 0]

It could look something like this:

Edited September 2, 2009 by Guest

[The Seeker 0]

Wouldn't you need last.fm's permission for this?

[Broken One 0]

No offense, but you should inform yourself of the capabilities of Greasemonkey it what it exactly is

The whole insertion happens only in your browser via Java Script and XmlHttpRequests. last.fm will never notice and you won't have to ask them to let some code run in your browser^^.

Greets,

Broken One

P.S.: I'm nearly finsihed but I bet it will be rather slow with the whole requests and regexps.

[The Seeker 0]

I somehow completely missed the whole Greasemonkey bit (not an easy feat considering how few replies there are so far)

[Farin 2]

It could look something like this:

hey, that looks great already

and it would be a cool way to promote SF on last.fm - I know there are many greasemonkey users there

[Broken One 0]

I have a working beta, now. It is still looking somewhat ugly and I like to redesign it a little bit and add some links to songfacts.

I'm also missing some feedback when there are now songfacts available. What I dislike most is the way I have to search, it seems to work but it is not very good.

As soon as I finished the design and got a link back to songfacts in it I will publish the script on userscripts.org.

I would glady try to incorporate suggestions or add things if you have any suggestions?

Greets,

Broken One

[Carl 21]

Hey Broken. Thanks for working on this, and it's starting to come together for me.

It sounds like you need an API to search the database and display the content more efficiently. Is that correct?

[Broken One 0]

Hoi, no problem I'm glad to do it and I hope I will create something that some people might find useful.

Yeah if there was an API that I could use with a simple XmlHttpRequest and that would return the unformatted facts as XML oder clean HTML it would be really great.

Greets,

Broken One

[Carl 21]

Broken-

I tossed this over to our developer and he's having a look. Should have an answer soon...

Carl

[Farin 2]

any news for this?

[Carl 21]

Yeah, I talked with some of the technical folk, and while this is possible, it creates the potential for problems, as other sites could easily steal the content if we were to set up some kind of API. It is a real interesting application, but I'm just not comfortable with what it could open up.

[Farin 2]

bummer... but understandable, I guess

[Broken One 0]

One could steal your content with any webcrawler or programmed application. It would be easier with an API, but what about protecting the API so that only people with a login can access or use it?

Sorry that I didn't let you hear anything. I just started studying and had to move to a new city.

As soon as all is back to normal I will try to pretty up my version and get it out!

Greets,

Broken One