Appendix B: Media Server Queries

12/21/04

Query Type	Description
Full list of query types (these go in the type field)
themes	get a list of themes
whatsnext	get a list of upcoming songs on a given stream
longestsinceplayed	get a list of songs, ordered by when last played
recentadditions	get a list of songs, ordered by when added to the system
recentlyplayed	get a list of songs, ordered by when last played
searchgenres	search for genres whose name matches given search string
searchartists	search for artists whose name matches given search string
searchalbums	search for albums whose name matches given search string
searchinternetradio	search for Internet radio whose name matches given search string
searchtitles	search for songs whose name matches given search string
searchall	search for songs whose name,artist,album or genre matches given search string

Option Name	Description
Options common to all queries¹
quantity²	Maximum number of entries to return
offset²	How many entries to skip
anynameyoulike³	To allow embedding of session IDs or anything else the caller wants to use to identify queries, all XML fields are echoed back in the query result. (see the anynameyoullike field in the sample from the XML Protocol Overview).
Only valid in the queries which start with 'search'
letters	restrict selections to items which start with this text
idGenre⁴	restrict selections to items which are in the genre idGenre
idArtist⁴	restrict selections to items which are by the artist idArtist
idAlbum⁴	restrict selections to items which are in the album idAlbum

Note 1 - a blank search (no letters or id fields) returns all results (so the searches can be used to get a complete list)

Note 2 - quantity and offset are used to control which entries in the query result list are returned. If a query has 20 results, a quantity of 10 will get the first 10, quantity of 10 with an offset of 5 will return entries 5-15.

Note 3 – The name anynameyoulike is just an example, you can name the field any string you wish, as long as it conforms to the XML naming rules, and doesn't conflict with any of our field names. Also note you can have as many custom tags as you want.

Note 4 - these ids are indexes into the genre/artist/albums, these indexes are given in the results of queries (so they are usually used to restrict an existing query, for example, a list of genres might be shown to the user, then they select one, then a list of artists in that genre would be displayed.