Script for printing collections

ulugabi · February 27, 2021, 5:17am

You mean exporting all the releases with Artist + Title?

aerozol · February 27, 2021, 9:01pm

What a cool idea… I’m guessing you mean these pages:
https://musicbrainz.org/user/aerozol/collections

I wonder if this would be worth a feature request?

lytninb · February 28, 2021, 2:04am

Yes, in a nice printed page A to Z.

lytninb · February 28, 2021, 2:05am

Yes, so we can print our collection out.

ulugabi · February 28, 2021, 3:08am

Wonder too as:

Data is already available (with some IT knwoledge)
Formatting is user dependant

You could request something more generic in order it serves more users.
ex: able to export tables in csv

IvanDobsky · February 28, 2021, 9:59am

This option x 100. Currently I am limited to a copy\paste of the screen and dump it into notepad++ for formatting

Imagine if a bored Database scripter came up with a script that could also add other columns like MBID to that CSV.

jesus2099 · February 28, 2021, 10:37am

I made a printing-friendly user CSS for collection with a JavaScript to append all pages together on one page, make a big long table.

But.

I don’t find them back.
They may ot have been compatible with current MBS because after that, I made the COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTER to workaround MBS-3491 instead.

But now that extension support is threatened on Android (only Firefox 68), I am interested again.

kellnerd · February 28, 2021, 11:49am

You can get a list of releases in a collection in JSON (or XML) using the API.
Using one of @aerozol’s public collections as example (because they are already linked in this thread) https://beta.musicbrainz.org/ws/2/release?collection=cd8e0a8d-437a-4c1b-b808-60f37ba00c14&inc=artist-credits+labels&fmt=json is probably a good start.
It should be relatively easy to transform this into CSV with a userscript if this is the format most people would like to have, maybe I will give it a try (but I can not promise it). Or is @jesus2099 already coding something fancy?

jesus2099 · February 28, 2021, 12:14pm

Oh I will not try to redo my website based script as you are right, we should do with the API, it is far more maintainable.
I have a problem of time.
I won’t work on this anytime soon but will most certainly use the feature a lot, if someone makes it!

biocv · February 28, 2021, 12:44pm

Seconded. This worked fine for me. I wrote some python code using the requests library to import my collection in JSON format. After that, it was relatively straightforward to convert to a csv file.

jesus2099 · February 28, 2021, 12:59pm

I remember Excel files are always a challenge to make things inside the printing zone and correct multipaging, no?

Maybe I will eventually try to redo my CSS with endless loading… When I have some time. Don’t count on me.

ulugabi · February 28, 2021, 1:23pm

If you want the MBID you can already do a right click/view source code of page rather than copy paste into notepad

IvanDobsky · February 28, 2021, 5:05pm

CSV is just plain text. Comma Separated Text. Nothing as complex as Excel.

The trick I do is to copy\paste into OneNote. It gives a nice clean table without any cleaning up needed. But then I realise not many people use OneNote.

Haha - I just looked at “view page source” and got one long line of text without even a line feed!

A simple, dumb, export to plain text file would be such a useful addition. This is another place where MB needs to nick more ideas from Discogs as their Collection has an export to CSV option.

jesus2099 · February 28, 2021, 6:12pm

I would prefer a printable page, like the OP.

jesus2099 · February 28, 2021, 7:17pm

Apparently for some versions of Chromium browsers, one would have to add a strange workaround for it to repeat table headers on each printed page (that other browsers do genuinely).

div#content table.tbl > thead > th { break-inside: avoid; }

To be verified.

aerozol · March 1, 2021, 10:16pm

I heart userscripts, but everything’s better when embedded into the product imo!

So, even if it’s unlikely:

jesus2099 · March 2, 2021, 12:28pm

It still does not load the full collection.

github.com

jesus2099/konami-command/blob/master/mb_PRINT-ALL-PAGES.user.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name         mb. PRINT ALL PAGES
// @version      2021.3.2
// @description  musicbrainz.org: (VERY BASIC AT THE MOMENT) Print your complete collections to make your shopping lists or check lists. It will work on more than just collections.
// @namespace    https://github.com/jesus2099/konami-command
// @supportURL   https://github.com/jesus2099/konami-command/labels/mb_PRINT-ALL-PAGES
// @downloadURL  https://github.com/jesus2099/konami-command/raw/master/mb_PRINT-ALL-PAGES.user.js
// @author       jesus2099
// @licence      CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
// @licence      GPL-3.0-or-later; http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt
// @since        2021-03-02; https://community.metabrainz.org/t/script-for-printing-collections/521437
// @icon         data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAQAKEDAP+/3/9/vwAAAP///yH/C05FVFNDQVBFMi4wAwEAAAAh/glqZXN1czIwOTkAIfkEAQACAwAsAAAAABAAEAAAAkCcL5nHlgFiWE3AiMFkNnvBed42CCJgmlsnplhyonIEZ8ElQY8U66X+oZF2ogkIYcFpKI6b4uls3pyKqfGJzRYAACH5BAEIAAMALAgABQAFAAMAAAIFhI8ioAUAIfkEAQgAAwAsCAAGAAUAAgAAAgSEDHgFADs=
// @require      https://github.com/jesus2099/konami-command/raw/fb2225a2146d1586b7f113ad13df476adf314ac7/lib/SUPER.js?v=2021.2.4
// @grant        GM_info
// @include      /^https?:\/\/(\w+\.)?musicbrainz\.org\/collection\/[a-f0-9]{8}-[a-f0-9]{4}-[a-f0-9]{4}-[a-f0-9]{4}-[a-f0-9]{12}(\?page=1)?$/
// @run-at       document-ready
// ==/UserScript==
"use strict";
const userjs = {
	id: GM_info.script.name.replace(/\.\s/, "_").replace(/\s/g, "-"),

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At the moment, I have just done the basic css for print.
I still need to copy my page loader from mb_COLLECTION-HIGHLIGHTER.
It should not be long but I am busy now.
And I thought also of having a checkbox toolbar at the top, to unselect the columns you don’t want to print.
And maybe never print label disambiguation comments.

Before installing it, go to your collection first page and press Ctrl+P or Ctrl+Shift+P to preview print.

Then install it (Raw button in GitHub), go to your collection first page, click the yellow button, then preview print again, to see the difference.

jesus2099 · March 8, 2021, 11:51pm

Now my script is fully functional on collections.

Go to your collection’s first page (Overview tab)
You can optionally order by what column you want
Click on the yellow Load all pages for print button
Wait for all pages to be loaded and appended // s(h)it back and relax
Launch your Print preview (usually now it’s Ctrl+P shortcut)
Try printing colours and backgrounds for better readability

jesus2099 · March 9, 2021, 12:32am

It’s even useful on mobile (Android Firefox 68.11.0 only) where the Page > Save as PDF makes a very usable PDF out of it.
Very convenient to inline search your whole collection, when in shops, without being able to print.

IvanDobsky · March 9, 2021, 11:50am

Excellent work @jesus2099. I also like the fact that this solution lets us hit the column headers to set the sorts before printing.

BONUS FEATURE: It also makes my copy\pasta trick work direct into Excel. Just drag a selection box around the whole table, starting from the header row at the top and scroll to the bottom of the web page.

Best part of that is all those copy\pasta’d links are kept too. So now I have a spreadsheet of album titles that can be clicked and dive into MB pages.