SHOUTcast PLS Downloader

@author Sanjay Madhavan

Description

This Utility navigates the excellent shoutcast.com web site and downloads to a local directory a copy of the PLS files referenced on the website.

This utility is ideal for building a local list of shoutcast stations suitable for use with the XBOX Media player (XBMP) or XBOX Media Center (XBMC)..

Currently the following default Genres defined on the shoutcast.com web site are defined in the default_genres.properties If your favorite genre is not listed here you can to add it to this file.

TopTen - Top 25 Streams
Alternative - Alternative
Classical - Classical
Comedy - Comedy
Country - Country
Dance - Dance/House
Funk - Funk
Jazz - Jazz
Metal - Metal
Mixed - Mixed
Pop - Pop
Rap - Rap
RnB - RnB
Rock - Rock
Talk - Talk
Techno - Techno
80s - The '80s
70s - The '70s
World - World

Features

Download all genres in a single run
Choose a specific genre to be downloaded
Limit the number of PLS files downloaded per genre
Select the minimum bitrate and/or maximum bitrate of stations to be downloaded
Shoutcast.com limits the number of requests to approximately 1000 per IP per day. This tool can detect when the local IP address has been banned and will save the last genre/page index processed and continue processing when restarted. In addition by default the tool will sleep for 4 hours when banned and retry
Proxy support
Copies a suitable image icon as a thumbnail file (.tbn) for each genre
Uses the Jakarta commons logging library and http client library

Installation

Ensure you have a recent Java JDK installed on your system (tested with Sun JDK 1.4.2).
Download the latest release and unpack the zip file into its own directory.

Usage

To launch the program directly from a command line, change the current directory to the directory where the contents of the release have been unzipped and use the specifed command listed below.
java -cp .;lib\commons-httpclient-2.0-rc2.jar;lib\commons-logging.jar;lib\commons-logging-api.jar;bin com.revasoft.shoutcast.plsdownloader.PlsDownloader
On Windows platforms it is convenient to just use the supplied PlsDownloader.cmd batch file.
On Linux platforms use the supplied PlsDownloader.sh shell script.
```
PlsDownloader Valid usage is:
        PlsDownloader
                -DownloadDirectory d:/Shoutcast
                [-MaxFilesPerGenre 100]
                [-ProcessGenre Alternative]
                [-GenreList genre_list.properties]
                [-ProxyList proxylist.properties]
                [-IgnoreSavedState]
                [-MaximumBitRate 64]
                [-MinimumBitRate 128]
```
All parameters listed in square brackets are optional.
Some sample invocations are listed below

To download all genres to a local directory:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast
To download all genres to a local directory limiting the pls download count to 25 per genre:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast -MaxFilesPerGenre 25
To download all genres to a local directory selecting only stations with bitrate greater than equal to 64 and less than equal to 128:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast -MinimumBitRate 64 -MaximumBitRate 128
To download only the genre Rock:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast -ProcessGenre Rock
To ignore the previous saved state and start from scratch:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast -IgnoreSavedState
To specify a list of proxy servers that should be used when accessing the web:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast -ProxyList proxylist.properties
Note: the proxylist.properties file if specified must be a standard Java properties file which can have contents defined in the format below.
```
		 ProxyCount=2
		 Proxy.1=192.168.0.1:3128
		 Proxy.2=127.0.0.1:8001
	 
```
To specify a list of genres that should be used when processing:
PlsDownloader.cmd -DownloadDirectory d:\Shoutcast -GenreList c:/genre_list.properties
Note: the genre_list.properties file if specified must be a standard Java properties file which can have contents defined in the format below.
The format is Key,Description (see the default_genres.properties file for an example)
```
		 GenreCount=2
		 Genre.1=TopTen,Top Ten Stream
		 Genre.2=World,World Music
	 
```

Notes

If this tool is being used to build a list of stations for the XBMP or XBMC program, currently the local directory created with the PLS contents must be copied physically to the XBOX since the current version of the Streaming server Relax (0.76pre) seems to have a bug when streaming directories across the net that contain .pls files.
The shoutcast.com site limits requests per IP address per day. Please respect their policies.

License

This code is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License
@author Sanjay Madhavan

Downloads

This code is hosted on Sourceforge.net and can be downloaded from there.

Version History:

Version Date Who Comments

V1.0 24.11.2003 Sanjay First release

V1.1 01.12.2003 Sanjay Added user specifiable Genres

V1.1a 03.12.2003 Sanjay Added Linux shell script

Version	Date	Who	Comments
V1.0	24.11.2003	Sanjay	First release
V1.1	01.12.2003	Sanjay	Added user specifiable Genres
V1.1a	03.12.2003	Sanjay	Added Linux shell script