Add simplified music library search action to Squeezebox

[peteS-UK]

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[home-assistant]

Hey there @rajlaud, @pssc, mind taking a look at this pull request as it has been labeled with an integration (squeezebox) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

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[pssc]

Is there anyway to expose this in the browse interface?

[peteS-UK]

Is there anyway to expose this in the browse interface?

Sadly not AFAIK. Really, the media browser needs searching and paging to be more useful. These are just tidier ways of doing searching as that's a common task if you're doing complex integrations.

[joostlek]

Okay I just asked Allen, and apparently there is an architectural proposal open for querying the media browser using a service call. home-assistant/architecture#1079. I think it would be nice to have a generic service as that might avoid specific services with different structures. Can you have a look and leave a comment what you think? (like, I can imagine that the generic call won't cover all bases, but maybe you have another view on this than we do)

[peteS-UK]

Okay I just asked Allen, and apparently there is an architectural proposal open for querying the media browser using a service call. home-assistant/architecture#1079. I think it would be nice to have a generic service as that might avoid specific services with different structures. Can you have a look and leave a comment what you think? (like, I can imagine that the generic call won't cover all bases, but maybe you have another view on this than we do)

I think it could be a useful addition, but I think the challenge is that the browser is designed to browse - i.e. you get a list of top level items, you drill into that list and get a new list. This means that you always know the id of the item(s). The example they give assumes you know the full name and structure of the media content id, and I think that structure is end point specific - with squeezebox, the id is a numeric string which you won't know. Partial string matching wouldn't work here since the search is against that item_id - not something user friendly or visible. I'll comment over there. I think you really need a media_search method to be useful. You could then also expose this (hopefully) through the media browser interface.