What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

All about the iOS / Android / Web / Other apps that can be used with kJams! Questions, bug reports, feature requests!
HowardBrazee
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by HowardBrazee »

Interesting. I opened http://howard-brazees-computer.local/main on my Mac's browser and entered " in the search and got 1000 (zero to 999) matches. My first thought was that my server setting was 1000, but I actually have exactly 1000 songs.

I then tried that same page on my iPad, and that didn't work. I tried "\*, and finally figured I was supposed to just have \*

That worked for wtkJams as well. I bought that on my iPad, but it still wants me to pay for it on my iPhone, which seems weird, so I haven't downloaded it there.

Apparently, in the web page, I have to select Search By "Any". If I search by Title or Artist, it's not finding anything. That's fine. I can then sort by Title or Artist or even Album.

But in wtkJams, I don't see how to search by artist.

DeusExMachina
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by DeusExMachina »

As long as both devices use the same AppleID, I think they should both be able to get WTKJams.
Are you looking at the same app on both? WTKJams is not the same app as WTKJams KE.

Grabbing your whole library works fine if you only have 1000 songs in your library. Not so great once you have 90,000!

I added the code for the "Search by" functionality. Because of how it works, it is not going to find anything if you try to use it with "\*".
But why would you do that anyway? That makes no sense. Searching for "\*" returns the entire library. The entire library is the entire library. all tracks have names, all tracks are by someone, so searching by artist of track name makes no sense.

If you want to sort by either, just do your search for "\*" and then sort by Artist or Name by clicking on that column heading in the browser window.

To sort by artist or track name, you do the same thing as in the web interface, clock on the relevant sort button.

Neither Dave nor I have anything to do with WTKJams, that's Dave Junod. He has a different site, or you can try his Facebook page.
Last edited by DeusExMachina on Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

HowardBrazee
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by HowardBrazee »

I found out that my phone and pad have slightly different appleIDs. When I first got an appleID, it was on a Windows machine and it wasn't in e-mail form. Later on Apple required it to be in e-mail form. Later on, I got an iPhone and found that that e-mail address couldn't be used in "Find My Friends". So I added an Apple e-mail address. But I couldn't move over the stuff I already purchased to this new ID. Didn't make me like Apple.

In our last Karaoke night, I printed out two copies of the song list - one sorted by Title, and the other by Artist. They took turns browsing these and filling in a request sheet to ask me to add the songs. But a couple of them gave me a couple of bucks and I bought songs that night.

An advantage of having songs in title order was that they could see duplicates right away.

If they could look on their own device, they could do this browsing without waiting someone else to finish, without turning in a slip, and with a fully current list. With their browser, they can look at the whole library, sorted by Title or Artist. But it keeps logging them off, and they have to keep logging in again. That's a pain that would be worth the $4.99 to buy the app.

In the App, if I select [All], I can search for \* and get a list of all songs, sorted by title. It won't work if I select [Artist] or [Title]. What they *can* do is browse the whole library, and when they see an artist, search for that artist.

DeusExMachina
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by DeusExMachina »

Just logout of the one iCloud account on the device that does not have WTKJams, and log back in with the account that is associated with the app. Go to the App Store, download the app onto that device, then you are free to log back out again, and then log back in to whatever account you want, and the app will still work. It just won't autoupdate.

As to sorting and searching, you still are not understanding. Searching and sorting are two entirely different things. You are having problems because you are conflating the two. You can not search for a sorted list, you have to search first, then sort. Also, the buttons I added are NOT sort buttons, they are search restriction buttons. So clicking on the "Artist" "Search by" button with return all items whose "artist" value matches the search term you typed in. For instance, if you typed in "Beatles", using "Any" as the search type, would return all songs by the Beatles, but clicking on "Title" might only return "Bigger than the Beatles" by Joe Diffie (because the word "Beatles" is in its title).
As I said previously, searching for all songs, restricted to songs by artists, or all songs with names, which is essentially what you are trying to force kJams to do, does not even make sense!
All songs in your Library should have names, and they should all have artists who performed them!
You need to search first, THEN sort.
So to get a list of the entire songbook sorted by artist, you would first search for "\*", with the sort selector set on "Any" (which is how it is set by default) and once the results came in, THEN click on the top of the "Artist" column to sort by sort Artist.

HowardBrazee
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by HowardBrazee »

The web page allows users to do what I want. They have to select [Any] then enter \*, and then they can sort by Song Name or Artist or Album. Its big problem was my problem - I didn't see that I could turn off the auto-logoff feature. (Or change its auto-logoff to longer than it takes to sing a song).

WTKJams doesn't appear to let me look at the whole library sorted by artist. But it doesn't require users to log in at all (except the first time they use it).

dave
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by dave »

you are right, wtkJams doesn't allow you to sort by artist. if you want that feature, you have to ask Dave Junod.

DeusExMachina
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by DeusExMachina »

A few important points:
The shouldn't have to select "Any". It is the default, and is preselected.
If you get ambitious, and increase the size of your library, you will quickly find that showing the entire library by searching for \* is an unworkable solution. For instance, on my library, it takes approximately 15 minutes for the library to download and display over server.
It works with 1000 tracks. Not so much with tens of thousands.
WTKJams doesn't require a user to log in because it is designed as a personal use app, where the person using it is the owner of the device, and sets up the app to auto login that user.
It a different user logs in that has no used that device before, they have to enter a password. WTKJams does, however, remember previous users. This can be a problem in a group environment, where people may hit the wrong singer, and enter songs, only to find they never their turn, because they logged in as someone else.
That is why the host should be using the KE version, which avoids these issues.
If you want server to stay logged in, just change the autologout value to some very high number, like 3600. That gives your singers an hour to dither around and be indecisive.
This raises its own problems, which is why I had autologout added in the first place. Singers forget to logout, the next singer comes along, also doesn't log that singer out, and every track they add to tonight gets added to the first singer, not the second singer. It leads to a royal headache.
Why would you want a singer to leave the server station logged in while singing a song? That makes no sense. Then any number of other people will be able to add songs to their playlists, while they are signing.
But if you want to turn autologout off, just uncheck the checkbox in kJams>Preferences>Server>Auto-Logout Sessions.

DeusExMachina
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by DeusExMachina »

Addendum:
Apparently autologout is broken. There is a bug that is causing kJams to ignore your autologout sessions value (unless you set it to 0, which causes kJams to crash as soon as someone logs in!).
Dave has been informed.
Once fixed, the previous reply should be applicable again.

HowardBrazee
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by HowardBrazee »

I never considered that we might have a computer set up with multiple people using it. I was thinking everybody would use their own smart phones to browse and select songs. In this case, having to log on (typing their password on tiny phones - we are all old), is a pain.

If we had a computer or two set up for various people to browse through our kJams library, auto-log off makes a lot of sense.

DeusExMachina
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by DeusExMachina »

You can easily edit the code to not require a login password.
The server code is in ~/Library/Preferences/kJams/
(Although it would be nice if it were in its proper place in ~/Library/Application Support/)! :)

But that said, there is no reason it needs to be onerous, even for people with bad eyes. As I suggest to many of my users, the single letter "a" is a perfectly acceptable password!
(I maintain a firewall in order to prevent Vladimir Putin from submitting fake song requests!)

dave
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Re: What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

Post by dave »

:?

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