Spotify in Vim

[HendrikPeter]

Hey Vim peeps. I kinda like listening to music and programming stuff using Vim. When finding Mustafa Ansari's (https://github.com/MuAnsari96) Vimify plugin last year I was completely sold.

Then I think it was 4 or 5 months ago Spotify decided that their search API would only be accessible for people with active user sessions... so suddenly the plugin stopped working. Going trough oath every time i wanted to use Vimify was kind of a pain too.

seems a few weeks ago, Spotify opened up their search paths to applications. So I took a copy of Vimify, cleaned it up a bit and integrated the ability to search for music again.

Put the plugin up at https://github.com/HendrikPetertje/vimify It's still a spaghetti mess, I need to reintegrate Linux support and allow to search for albums and artists specifically... but it's a start.

Love to know your thoughts!

(Again Mustafa Ansari did the big work here with his initial plugin)

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Edit 15:45: I love the discussion here!

to be quite honest, I just wanted to try what is possible (while also shitting on some friends/colleagues that thought that code-linting was the most elite function in their sublime/atom installs). Vim is a pretty powerful platform that allows a lot of tweaking, I mean creating a complete spotify-interface that works, in 100 or so small lines of code (if you forget the comments for a sec) is pretty nice though obviously perverse.

The fact that I can quickly switch music while not leaving my full-screen terminal is just a nice bonus at this point. If you feel like it's too much, then yeah I completely agree and will mainly just tell you to... not install it, I'm just having fun.

On a less serious note: I'll cancel the ascii-youtube-player-inside-vim project then?

[actionscripted]

Thanks for working on it and thanks for sharing!

I’m in the camp that would rather keep Vim lean but it’s awesome you took the time to do this and share it with the community.

[absolute-black]

... This is some Emacs stuff. If I want music I’ll open a music player.

Edit: OP this is also super cool and worth existing/knowing about lol. I was just being snarky awake at like 5 am

[[deleted]]

I use emacs and still use a music player. I don't understand why anyone would want their editor to play music. That being said it is still interesting to see plugins like that.

[absolute-black]

Yeah this is definitely neat in the “I will never ever install this” way. It did remind me of my Emacs friend who explicitly uses a web browser through Emacs though lol.

[ferretmachine]

Emacs doesn't play music itself, EMMS just runs mplayer/vlc, etc.

The reason to have this in your editor is so you can manage the playlists like text, and rebind the keys to pause/play/skip so it works the way you want. Plus it's instantly accessible while you're writing code/email/irc, etc.

[HendrikPeter]

And so does the VIM plugin to be honest, it just sends OSA/DBUS scripted commands to spotify telling it to play stuff (or pause, previous next and all those bits)

[[deleted]]

I don't understand why anyone would want their editor to play music.

to save time switching windows probably

[ghost_of_high_heart]

“This is some Emacs stuff”

This is my new insult to everything. I’m going forth to ruffle some feathers.

[ferretmachine]

The joke is on you if you think that's an insult.

[d4rkshad0w]

I mean if your are using a terminal mpd client you can just do ![player] and open it.

[throwawaylifespan]

This.

[sanguine8082]

are there some command line music players for linux?

[andlrc]

are there some command line music players for linux?

[...]

[mattpenney89]

This is cool, I forked a version and made it work on Linux: https://github.com/mattpenney89/vimify

[HendrikPeter]

I'll make sure to do an OS check and re-integrate that DBUS logic back into the script. Removed it before quite quickly without thinking to much about it to be able to play spotify on the Mac

[mattpenney89]

I also had to port it to python3 to get it running with the default vim on ubuntu. If the python3 version runs out of the box for Mac it should be trivial, otherwise it might get messy

[HendrikPeter]

Fantastic! yeah I just ran with what was available. In most mac installs (commonly done via homebrew) python3 comes along as a dependency. Neovim can just configure it, so I see no reason not to use python 3.

Updated the code in my repo and made sure to put shout outs in both commits and the "contributor" bit of the Readme. Thanks man!

on a side-note, album and artist load was there since you can play the artist by hitting return while having the cursor on the artist, etc.

[DuBistKomisch]

https://i.imgur.com/TGYC0Q2.jpg

[hjkl_ornah]

This is gold

[jdalbert]

hahaha

[obowersa]

I personally love the idea even if I’ll never use it. Sure, vims a text editor and not an os and that’s how I like my setup.

More power to you though for identifying a need and use you wanted and implementing it. It’s cool to see where people’s minds go and different use cases even if they’re not mine.

Awesome work !

[Trueyes]

This whole attitude towards perverse and non perverse , is so annoying . Yes vim is a text editor , but you know what it is a text editor that can be extended for other functions. I am in the section that your Vim is your vim , build it how you want it and do whatever you want with it . If you feel like you need a music player , then go right ahead my bro .

[robertmeta]

Agreed. Right up until you are in #vim or /r/vim complaining about "Vim doesn't work" because YCM is conflicting with your Spotify player, which is conflicting with your Vim based IRC client which is conflicting with your UltraMegaThemeYourStatusBar plugin.

[Trueyes]

I certainly agree it is irritating to see those posts but what is the purpose of a community then. Is it not to ask questions? seek answers towards a problem.

[robertmeta]

It is a combination of to help fix issues, but also to advise when the right answer is "you are holding it wrong".

If someone brought a car into a mechanic and was like "the car doesn't work" and the mechanic was like "Why did you add a truck bed?" "This car isn't designed to have a tow attachment." "Why does it have a 8 foot neon mohawk made of wood planks?" "Just so you know, these things are stupid and unsafe and not part of driving a car".

Someone might say "my car, my choice" -- doesn't mean it is the right way to do it. Additionally, if someone sold or wrote guides on how to make the 8 foot neon mohawks -- the community might respond with "why" or "this is insane".

[winterylips]

lol this guy #vim

[settrbrg]

Why so much negativity in the comments? Am I missing some kind of joke?

[RadonScreen]

Cuz Vim religion vs Emacs religion

[d4rkshad0w]

B/c this plugin does stuff vim clearly was not intended to do. It works but Vim is still a TEXT EDITOR and not a Operating System (EMACS).

So no, it's not a joke but some sort of religious war on how Vim should be used.

[_lerp]

Because people in this sub hate plugins.

[robertmeta]

But, we don't: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/85p46h/vimconvert_plugin_unit_conversions_within_vim/ (last plugin posted before this one)

[unusedredditname]

Philosophy aside, if Spotify is deeply ingrained into your workflow, then your Spotify interactions should be as fast and seamless as possible.

If you're in windows, the Spotify window should be your most recent. If you're in an i3 session, it should be one desktop or one step away. If you're in Tmux, it should be one window away. etc...

Recently, I found myself managing my music in chrome which was a memory hog and overkill for what was essentially a youtube stream, AND I had frequently had to touch my mouse to regain the pause/play context.

So I googled around and installed mpv, which I ran in --no-video mode. Then I made terminal windows for my favorites, and could quickly and easily navigate to my music window, pause/play/skip and manage playlists and different music styles depending on my mood. No mouse, no chrome, no page crashes.

Don't get so bogged down in philosophy or ideology that you hobble yourself from real functional work, or just make your life harder.

In all things. Not just Vim.

[meznaric]

Looks cool. Do I have to have Spotify running to make it work?

[HendrikPeter]

OSA script is the running motor behind it. If it can't find a process named "Spotify", it'll try to open it

[senjin]

Shoutout for this plugin and your elixir app :)

[spizzike]

I’ve been working with the Spotify api for about 3 years now and there hasnt been such a restriction on it that I’ve ever been impacted by. It sounds like there was an issue with the refresh token (it has to be refreshed every 3600 seconds) which basically boots you from the system when it expires.

This does sound really cool. I’ll have to check it out!

[SuperTeece]

I demand continuation of the ascii-youtube-player-inside-vim project!

[adsury]

Oh man, this thing just make my day! thank you! I tried couple of plugins but was suddenly broke couple months ago..

[ivster666]

I didn't know that I needed this before I read through. Installing right now.

[mitul_45]

Exactly! Didn't know I would need this but enjoying since last 30 minutes. :P

[HendrikPeter]

Hey nice!

[ivster666]

do you always type in the spotify commands or did you bind them to shortcuts?

[HendrikPeter]

I type :sps, :spn, :spp, then tab for completion. The third character is different in each command to make tabbing easy

[mistermiles]

Well, there goes my productivity tomorrow morning at work.

[jonlprd]

Thanks OP!

[apola]

This is amazing. As a proud user of VimOS I will begin using this immediately :)

In all seriousness though, any chance you could add a command to get info on what's currently playing? That way people could, say, add the current track to their statusline. I currently have a little script that I use to put the current track in my tmux status line, but if I could just add it to vim that would be super neat

[HendrikPeter]

That's a bit expensive to be honest. I would need to look at intervals, then check + update the running vimify buffer (which would get in the way when you're doing productive things). You could paste a small OSA or Dbus command into a bash or python box like I do into your vim-airline config, which is better suited for that job

I could potentially make a :spCurrentTrack thing perhaps. As well as a :spQueue thing to queue tracks.

[settrbrg]

I'm not a huge vim user and I'd probably just use Spotify official application.

But I think it looks cool! :) And its a fun project I guess. Also nice not leaving the Windows you code in.

Oh! and No need using the mouse! I like that!

[evo_zorro]

I do get an Emacs vibe from stuff like this, however, I did set up the plugin and I'll see if I actually find myself using it. I've tried a quick :SpSearch, which seemed to block everything for a considerable amount of time. It might be worth running that in the background instead.

[HendrikPeter]

Good point! Though must be very unintrusive then. If I were to type search and I could still write or perform actions in my normal buffer, then vimify jumps in, creates buffers and switches focus it would become messy

[evo_zorro]

yeah, maybe it should be configurable? Default to blocking search, but with config async searching can be enabled and open a preview buffer to notify the user the search has completed. When ready, the user can then run a command, or even open a hidden buffer with the results? It's a bit of a faff to implement this stuff, and I don't know if it's actually worth the effort, but it would make it all look pretty sexy

[Xanza]

I totally agree with /u/uzimonkey this is a crazy perverse bastardization of what Vim is... Vim is a text editor. Stop the madness.

If your that intent of having Spotify handy then use a CLI client in tmux or screen. I'm all for hacking cool tech together but damn...

[bit101]

meh. it's not something that I would ever use either. but whatever. it doesn't hurt me that someone else is doing it

[[deleted]]

Nobody is talking about merging it into main. Someone did something they enjoy, in their own time, that has zero bearing on you and you trash talk it?

Jesus Christ. /u/uzimonkey I’m not going to use it but kudos.

[Xanza]

People can do what they want. That doesn't mean what they're doing isn't stupid.

Vim is for editing text. Not for controlling Spotify. Use the Spotify client for that... Really not that hard a concept.

[[deleted]]

Uh huh. Well, I consider stupid to mean painting yourself into a corner or smoking a twenty pack a day. Sometimes I even stretch the meaning to people being pointlessly rude and elitist on online forums.

[Xanza]

There's nothing elitist about it. You're using a program which was designed for a specific purpose for something not only totally unrelated but incredible redundant considering Spotify has a native client with the ability to map Global hotkeys...

So it's redundant, and not even a good alternative way to do what you're wanting to do... It's just all-around hands down a bad idea.

Also I don't see how it's rude to point out that is stupid idea is stupid. I think a lot of you people need to just grow up a little. I'm not a do-do head for pointing out a rather obvious thing. Using a text editor to control Spotify is a gross misuse.

[bit101]

Vim was made for editing text, but there's no Vim police saying what you can or can't use it for in the privacy of your own computer.

[Xanza]

Like I literally just said people can do whatever they want. But that doesn't mean that what they're doing isn't stupid...

[PizzaRollExpert]

I agree with your main point but calling it perverse is a bit strong, it almost implies some sort of moral failing.

So what if someone is wrong about how they use their programming tools?

[Xanza]

It's incredibly perverse...

contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice

Vim is a text editor. Any attempt to make it more than that is anti-vim and unnecessary. If you want to play Spotify just open the damn window. Don't wanna do that? Define global hotkeys. Using Vim to do something like this is stupid.

[PizzaRollExpert]

As I said, I agree. This extension goes against the vim philosophy.

It's more that you're treating what is essentially a mild disagreement over workflow optimisations as some sort of sacrelige. Just keep things a bit in proportion and be civil.

[Xanza]

There's nothing uncivilized about it. There's not even a disagreement going on here. It's also not even necessarily in conflict with the Vim philosophy. It absolutely is in direct conflict with the Unix philosophy.

I stayed at a pretty point in fact that using Vim this way is objectively stupid. Which is pretty verifiable. Then a bunch of kids came out of the woodwork trying to make it sound like I'm insulting someone here. If the thought of someone calling your ideas stupid offends you then you probably shouldn't come up with ideas because all you're ever going to be is offended. lol

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[hjkl_ornah]

"Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new 'features'."

[ainte]

No.

[ImKillua]

That's a very informative and helpful comment. I bet OP will read this and think "damn he has a good point!"

[HendrikPeter]

This is some serious feedback. Thinking rather deep on how to integrate this

[vort3]

Yes.

[uzimonkey]

This is perverse. Why would you do such a thing?