A script to pick up song lyrics from the web - feedback

Question

Below is a PC implementation of this script written by Chris Schull which uses google to grab the lyrics of the selected song in iTunes and add them to the tags for the song.
Enjoy Andrew's first go at converting an Applescript to .net for the PC. I guess it is written in C++ since the file he gave me is .cs ?
using System;
using iTunesLib;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections;
namespace AJCOWLEY
/// <summary>
/// Provides Windows .Net methods for interacting with iTunes.
/// version 0.1 (this version) gets the lyrics for the currently playing track.
/// </summary>
public class myTunes
IiTunes iTunesApp;
const string baseurl = "http://www.google.com/search?q=site:searchlyrics.org-download";
public myTunes()
iTunesApp = new iTunesAppClass();
//Currently am only supporting one method: so go to it.
//Supply the current track playing. In future could loop around
// a playlist or selected tracks and get lyrics for all of them.
// easy enough to add when it is working reliably for one..
get_lyrical(iTunesApp.CurrentTrack, true);
static void Main()
//Instantiate an instance of the main class
myTunes _this = new myTunes();
* get_lyrical:
* First method developed for the myTunes application.
* Will get the lyrics for a given track
void get_lyrical(iTunesLib.IITTrack t, bool overwrite)
if ( (t != null) && ( ( t.Kind == ITTrackKind.ITTrackKindCD ) || (t.Kind == ITTrackKind.ITTrackKindFile )))
//Cast the generic track pointer
// to a pointer that supports lyrics
IITFileOrCDTrack f = (IITFileOrCDTrack) t;
//Get the current lyrics
string l = f.Lyrics;
//Check if okay to overwrite
if ( (l == null) || ( l.Length == 0 ) || (overwrite == true))
f.Lyrics = get_lyrics(f.Artist, f.Name );
* get_lyrics:
* Asks google to search a lyric website, and loops through
* each of the google hits. Each hit is opened and examined to see if
* it contains lyrics within predetermined delimters.
string get_lyrics(string Artist, string TrackName)
//Setup the url to be searched. remove parantheses and spaces from arguments
string url = baseurl+ fixup(Artist) +" lyrics " + fixup(TrackName);
string google_response=WebQuery(url);
* Loop through each google hit, get the URL, open the page, strip out the lyrics
* until lyrics != null
foreach( string hiturl in getgooglehits(googleresponse))
//launch the hit
//get responses in between the values "<font" and "</font>"
//then home in on the first ">" character.
string hitpage = WebQuery(fixup(hiturl));
hitpage=TextBetween(hitpage,"<font","</font>");
//Strio off the "" text
hitpage=hitpage.Substring(hitpage.IndexOf(">")+1);
//Strip off the "" text
hitpage=hitpage.Substring(0,hitpage.Length - 7);
//Strip off html newline breaks
string lyrics = clearHTML(hitpage);
if (lyrics.Length > 0 )
return hiturl":n"lyrics;
return "";
string clearHTML(string text)
string clean_text="";
bool kill=false;
foreach (char c in text)
if (c=='<') kill = false;
return clean_text;
* WebQuery:
* Open a web page and return the results as a string using System.Net
* N.B. The GetResponse method doesnt seem to like going through proxy servers.
* and yes, this should be in a class of its own (sic)
string WebQuery(string url)
WebResponse myResponse=null;
StreamReader readStream=null;
try
// Initialize the WebRequest and get the Webresponse handle
WebRequest myRequest = WebRequest.Create(url);
myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse();
// Read through the WebResponse.
Stream receiveStream = myResponse.GetResponseStream();
// Pipes the stream to a higher level stream reader with the required encoding format.
readStream = new StreamReader (receiveStream, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8 );
string text= readStream.ReadToEnd();
return text;
catch
return "";
finally
// Free up the resources.
if ( readStream != null) readStream.Close();
if (myResponse != null) myResponse.Close();
/* Loop throught the results using the <div> tags and http/html as markers
* to indicate where the results are
ArrayList get_googlehits(string google_results)
string text= google_results;
ArrayList s = new ArrayList();
string part;
while ( text.Length > 0)
//First zone in on the text between the div tags
part=TextBetween(text,"","");
//Now zone in on the url itself. The url will start with http and end in .html
part=TextBetween(part,"http",".html");
if ( part.Length == 0 )text=""; //reached end of the line
else
//prepare string for the next go around by stripping off
//the bit we have already looked at.
text=text.Substring(text.IndexOf(""));
//Add hit to the array
s.Add(part);
return s;
//Simple function to extract text between ( and including) two
//separators.
//Ideally this would be a class extension of "string"
string TextBetween(string s, string spat, string epat)
int startpos = 0, len;
string tmp;
if ((s==null) || (s.Length==0))
return "";
startpos=s.IndexOf(spat,startpos);
if (startpos== -1 )
return "";
tmp=s.Substring(startpos);
len=tmp.IndexOf(epat);
if (len==-1)
return "";
else
tmp=tmp.Substring(0,len+epat.Length);
return tmp;
//Replace spaces with + and remove parentheses
string fixup(string s)
return s.Replace(" ","+").Replace("(","").Replace(")","");
} //end of class declaration
}//end of Namespace

Answer 1

Otto42 has a multi-script utility that will do just this function.
See here for individual functions: http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2005/10/20/itunes-javascripts/
Or get his 'QuickScripts.zip' multi-script utility: http://ottodestruct.com/blog/category/geekery/programmery/