Access total listeners data

Hi,

I'd like to know which file I have to read to get the total listener data from an artists (or something like a "profile information" for an artist, with total listeners, total plays scrobbled etc.).
I didn't find any solution to this problem on http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices/ ...

Hails

hi trascendentalA, can you help me with the php request url?, or where to search for it, I have been browsing this location:
svn://svn.audioscrobbler.net/client/Audioscrobbler/tags/1.3.1.1/src
but I really don't know where to search.

it works!,it works!, thanks ! :DD

I wrote 3 functions in VB.NET to do this, well I actually I copied 2 of them from here :).

@Heavyraptor, maybe you can use them as a guide if you can understand some VB.NET.


Public Function GetXmlResponseFromXML(ByVal url As String, ByVal xml As String, ByVal encoding As System.Text.Encoding) As Xml.XmlDocument
Dim bytes As Byte() = encoding.GetBytes(xml)
Return GetXmlResponseFromBinary(url, bytes, "text/xml")
End Function

Public Function GetXmlResponseFromBinary(ByVal url As String, ByVal bytes As Byte(), ByVal contentType As String) As Xml.XmlDocument
Dim request As Net.HttpWebRequest = DirectCast(Net.WebRequest.Create(url), Net.HttpWebRequest)
request.Method = "POST"
request.ContentLength = bytes.Length
request.ContentType = contentType
Using requestStream As IO.Stream = request.GetRequestStream()
requestStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)
End Using
Using response As Net.HttpWebResponse = DirectCast(request.GetResponse(), Net.HttpWebResponse)
If response.StatusCode <> Net.HttpStatusCode.OK Then
Dim message As String = [String].Format("POST failed. Received HTTP {0}", response.StatusCode)
Throw New ApplicationException(message)
End If
Dim responseSR As IO.StreamReader = New IO.StreamReader(request.GetResponse.GetResponseStream, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)
Dim XmlRta As Xml.XmlDocument = New Xml.XmlDocument
XmlRta.LoadXml(responseSR.ReadToEnd)
Return XmlRta
End Using
End Function

Private Function GetArtistNumberOfListeners(ByVal ArtistName As String) As Integer
Try
Dim XmlRta As Xml.XmlDocument = GetXmlResponseFromXML("http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/rw/xmlrpc.php";, _
"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""UTF-8""?>" & _
"<methodCall>" & _
"<methodName>artistMetadata</methodName>" & _
"<params>" & _
"<param><value><string>" & ArtistName & "</string></value></param>" & _
"<param><value><string>en</string></value></param>" & _
"</params>" & _
"</methodCall>", _
System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)
For Each node As Xml.XmlNode In XmlRta("methodResponse")("params")("param")("value")("struct").ChildNodes
If node("name").InnerText = "numListeners" Then
Dim NumListenersStr As String = node("value")("string").InnerText
Return CInt(Val(NumListenersStr))
End If
Next
Return 0
Catch ex As Exception
Return 0
End Try
End Function


and again, thanks a lot Philippe, I really needed this. it is almost 8 seconds faster! (using my slow internet connection) than my previous approach.

Hi,

thanks for your answers.
Unfortuneatly I don't know any VB.NET, I program in php. But I think I understand the idea beind it.

I'll post my result's later if it works :).

Thanks again.

heavyraptor said:
Are you really sure that it is needed to send that xml header?
Are you asking about the content type or the actual content? Anyways, they both have to be as mentioned above.

It could have plenty of causes for it not to be working. If you capture an attempt with Wireshak, it should be clear what the problem is. For this, start a new capture on the interface the traffic will go through -> let your program run -> stop the wireshark capture -> locate a packet from the communication -> right click -> follow tcp stream and post the content here

I'm no php aficionado at all, sorry. If you post a wireshark dump I'll probably be able to tell why it's not working though.
You might want to read this thread too, as they are trying to solve the same problem.

Don't know too much PHP, but I wrote a quick tool to grap this in perl (Yes, I am still in the dark ages). I used an xml-rpc library (XMLRPC::PurePerl) as the interface is by-the-book xml-rpc. If you can find a standard xml-rpc library for PHP it might make your life a lot simpler.

exhuma said:
If a new band pops up, it will naturally have less tracks scrobbled as bands that have been around for ages. It would be useful to receive a value indicating the time when the first track was registered on AS for that band. This would allow some calculations like "tracks scrobbled per hour" for example. Which would yield a much better indication of popularity.


I think that most current bands were created before last.fm so basically the first track scrobled of them depends of their popularity and last.fm popularity. Anyway you can get a good indicator of current popularity with the sum of the weekly top tracks that are shown in the artists pages. and if you want a 'tracks scrobbled per hour' value you can also get it from there just divide the sum of tracks in 168 hours :).

exhuma said:
In the same context, it is already possible in the user-settings to say that the profile page should only show statistics covering the last <x> months. Why is this not accessible over the Webservices? It would be useful in all the webservices accessing the "Top whatever". Being able to supply a start- and end-date would be even more interesting ;)


You can make it yourself using the weekly data, it's a bit longer to execute and implement but it's currently possible.

exhuma said:
I was planning to write a small script generating a simple image showcasing some profile statistics. Right now, the statistics I want to calculate are not possible to calculate with the data that is available through the WebServices.

If you finalize this small script please share it with us at the stats group

Looks like it doesn't work like this either:
HTTP/1.0 400 Bad request Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 53 Server: Perlbal Connection: close
400 - Bad request
Can't pipeline to HTTP/1.0

Anyway, I used www.last.fm, because the page I received told me that this file is temporary moved to last.fm and not ws.audioscrobbler.com ... which is actually weird.

Hails.

Ok, the $encdata was wrong, it should be $data, thanks.
I changed it now, but it still doesn't work (audioscrobbler returns "XML error: no element found at line 1"). The result looks like that:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:58:27 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) PHP/4.4.3
X-Proxy-Fix-Up: headers fixed up
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.3
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/xml;charset=utf-8

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<methodResponse>
<fault>
<value>
<struct>
<member>
<name>faultCode</name>
<value><int>103</int></value>
</member>
<member>
<name>faultString</name>
<value><string>XML error: no element found at line 1</string></value>

</member>
</struct>
</value>
</fault>
</methodResponse>

Hey man, thanks a lot :). It works for me too.
For the moment I have no further questions.

Thanks again! :)

curl, yeah! it works.
thank you, man.