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

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

PATH

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/

Starting the UI

To start Tchaik you first need to move into the

cmd/tchaik

$ 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

$ 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

$ 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

$ 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 :, s3://:/path/to/root for S3, or gs:///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

trim-path-prefix

add-path-prefix

-remote-store

Set

-remote-store

hostname:port

s3://:/path/to/root

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

gs:///path/to/root

GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS

-media-cache

Set

-media-cache

-remote-store

-local-store

-artwork-cache

Set

-artwork-cache

-trace-listen

Set

-trace-listen

localhost:4040

/debug/requests

Windows Support

The default value for parameter

-local-store

/

-local-store

-trim-path-prefix

-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!