How should xplmedianet hold it's music queue

["Tony Tofts" <tony@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

The current xplrionet holds queued tracks by their database track id (so
each track is an integer number, in an array of numbers making up the
queue)

This will no longer work with xplmedianet as we need to be able to queue
tracks via xpl and browse (i.e. full path/filename)

This means having to use a string array which will use a _lot_ (and I mean
a
__lot__) more resources than integers

This especially is an issue for users like Andy who like to queue 30000+
tracks at a time ;-)

I see a few options (and still save some memory space)

A) have a string array containing the full path/filename, but for items
from
the database hold just the id (e.g. "DB:12345"). The advantage of
this is
that only the xpl/browse items have to be held as a full string, saving
space and meaning that artist/album etc details can be obtained from the
database still for other items (rather than reading tags/format on the fly
when a track is to be queued next or playing)

B) Leave the main queue as a number array, but use negative numbers to
point
to a separate string array of just those tracks queued from browse/xpl.
E.g.
-1 = 1st track in string array

C) Have the clients use a database table to hold the track queue

'A' is more efficient than holding all tracks as strings, but is still very
memory inefficient compared to xplrionet

'B' is very efficient, and means queue can still be manipulated quickly in
memory

'C' is the slowest, but is totally memory efficient as it won't use any.
There's also the option of preloading the table with all the information
like artist/album/track/genre etc

Any thoughts/comments please?

Thanks
Tony



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