python-musicbrainz3

The python-musicbrainz3 package was planned to be the successor of python-musicbrainz2. For an active project try python-musicbrainz-ngs.

NGS is coming, so a rewrite is in order to keep up with MB development. This wiki page collects information, plans, and ideas for this project.

Feel free to edit!

Goals

• Fully support the NGS data model and web service
• Require Python 2.6 and aim to be as close to Python 3 as possible
• Despite NGS's complexity: Simple things should be simple
• Turn today's modules into packages (source files are much too large)
• Make it more pythonic where possible (spaces instead of tabs; naming conventions?)
• Remove rarely used cruft (what would that be?)
• Keep the amount and quality of documentation
• Write more test cases

Project Infrastructure

• This wiki page is the central source of information
• Discussion can take place on the development mailing list
• Source code is hosted at git://git.musicbrainz.org/python-musicbrainz3.git (web interface)
• Submit bug reports and feature requests via PYMB Jira
  • Do we want to use Jira just for bug reports, or as a dumping ground for upcoming tasks too (e.g. 'Do author search') --alastair
  • I don't know. Using it for tasks sounds like a good idea, too. --matt
• Upload patches to Review Board in group python-musicbrainz

Project Plan

1. Set up project infrastructure
   1. Wiki page (done)
   2. Git repository (done)
   3. Jira project (done)
   4. Group in Review Board (done)
2. Evaluate tools
   1. XML mapping tool (Matt, in progress)
   2. Unit test runner (nose?)
      1. What's the advantage of something like nose over just using the unittest package? I don't have much experience in unit testing python stuff. --alastair
   3. Look at ETree or similar for XML (also consider json libraries?) (Alastair, in progress)
3. Create UML diagrams for
   1. the core entities (done)
   2. pymb3's classes
4. Set up project structure in the repository (Matt, in progress)
5. Gather data for the parser
   1. Update MMD Relax NG schema if necessary (done)
   2. Prepare initial set of example documents for the test suite (done)
6. Start hacking!

Model

This is a simplified model showing only the core entities.

The m:n associations displayed with bold lines (Artist to anything, Release to Label) are attributed and will be modeled using association classes (ArtistCredit and ReleaseEvent respectively). We implement 1:n associations using lists.

TODO: Are Work to Recording, ReleaseGroup to Release ordered?

TODO: The URL class is only used for ARs?

Links

Links with documentation and other relevant information.

• Matt's original blog announcement and mailing list archive
• Schema Overview
• NGS Web Service Interface
• NGS Web Service XML Format
• MusicBrainz Server Entities

Ideas and Open Questions

• Use an XML mapping package (xml.etree?)
• Use distutils or setuptools? With setuptools we'd get test commands.
• Is Tracklist a top-level entity? Is it in the web service? Should it be in pymb3?