Hello together,
I am working my way into tagging in Picard.
Now I am writing my own script based on a script from @rdswift.
In order for me to write queries, I would need to see what tags have been populated as by Picard.
For this I have already installed the plugin “view script variables”.
Unfortunately, this does not really help me, because I need to see the tags of several songs in comparison.
Now I would like that of all songs all tags or variables with their values in an Excel CSV file. Is there already a plugin for this? If not, how could this be realized?
I would be very happy about your support.
Many greetings
Dirk
“View script variables” would have also been what I’d suggest.
Export to CSV could in general also be done by a plugin, but I am not aware of a plugin which does this.
If you know a bit of Python such a plugin could be realized. The plugin would register a file action and maybe also track action, that iterates over all selected files and use the file’s metadata object to generate the data for the CSV. Such actions are then available in the context menu.
See the documentation for how a simple context menu action plugin is structured: https://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/en/appendices/plugins_api.html#context-menu-actions
Best way to get into this is to look at existing plugins. The View Script Variables plugin could actually be a good starting point:
https://github.com/metabrainz/picard-plugins/blob/2.0/plugins/viewvariables/init.py
But also other plugins that use register_file_action, see https://github.com/metabrainz/picard-plugins/search?q=register_file_action
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Many thanks @outsidecontext
I almost figured there wasn’t a plugin for this yet because I didn’t find anything about it. Also no hint about it in the community. I was hoping that maybe there is a user there who remembers an amount. I am just not so long in it.
I’m a little surprised because I think that such a plugin could help in the development of plugins or scripts.
I’m doing well with writing scripts so far. The learning curve is not very steep.
I have not yet developed program code for a plugin. I think the learning curve is steeper there.
What prerequisites would I have to create so that I can develop plugins in Python. I would like to do this and continue to learn.
What would the development environment look like? What needs to be installed? Is there a HowTo for this?
It would be great to learn more about this.
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Actually, I developed a plugin a couple of years ago to dump to a text file the release and track metadata that is provided as arguments to their respective plugin types. It is available from my repository on GitHub. I’ve also just submitted it for consideration to include in the “official” Picard plugins.
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@rdswift
Thank you for your advice. I have just downloaded and installed it. Under “Settings” ==> “Plugins” it is shown as installed.
Unfortunately I can’t find any hint how to use it. The plugin “View Script Variables” is started via the context menu. I guess that this plugin “Data Dumper” should run similarly. Or when saving music files.
Do you have a hint for this? Where do I have to look or what would I have to do?
@rdswift
Has just settled.
I overlooked that it was not activated in the “Settings” ==> “Plugins”.
That was a mistake on my part.
It works and I take it now once under the magnifying glass. 
Many thanks
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First, make sure that you have the plugin enabled in the Settings => Plugins screen. After that, it runs automatically whenever you retrieve a release from MusicBrainz, and appends the output to a file called ‘data_dump.txt’ in your file naming destination directory. Typically you would disable the plugin again right away, or else the output file could grow out of control. Perhaps I should change the behavior to overwrite the file each time.
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