iTunes Ratings Analysis

About this project

Have an iPod? Using iTunes to store and rate your music? This will show you a fancy analysis of your preferences - here's an example analysis of my music. The analysis takes a little while (5-10 mins) to run - be patient!

Your iTunes Music Library.xml can be found in the following places:

Windows: My Documents/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
Mac: Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml

About this project: This project analyzes your iTunes collections, showing the highest rated artists and albums, etc. A Python script parses the iTunes Music Library.xml file and stores the information in a PostgreSQL database, then performs the analysis using a series of SQL queries. The little charts are based on summize.com - each color represents a different rating (black is 0, red is 1, etc.). You can mouse over the colors to see the exact number of songs that had that rating.

Source files:

uploadiTunesFile.cgi - the Python script that receives the library file and spawns driveiTunesFile.cgi.
driveiTunesFile.cgi - the Python script that calls the parsing and analysis methods.
getiTunesStatus.cgi - returns the status of the session. (including whether it's done or not)
iTunesInfo.py - Python script that parses the library file and stores it in the database.
analyzedb.py - Python script that does the analysis on the database and outputs it to an HTML file.
jquery-1.2.1.min.js - the jQuery JavaScript library.
sorttable.js - JavaScript library for adding sorting to tables. (from here)
iTunesRating.js - JavaScript library for polling for status and redirecting to finished analysis page.
Debug.py - simple Python library for debugging statements.

Optimization process - I spent a while optimizing these scripts. Here are writeups of what I did:

Here are the versions the script went through:

Version 1 - uses DOM parsing
Version 2 - uses SAX parsing
Version 3 - uses more efficient database insertions