Directory search

[TonCherAmi]

Hi. Is it possible to search the database for directories? I’ve looked at the protocol documentation and it seems like the only way to do it is to filter through listall output which, I understand, is not recommended.

The reason I want to do this is that I organize my music in directories like so:

music
├── genre1
│   └── Artist1
│       └── (1970) Album1
│           ├── 01 - Song1
│           └── 02 - Song2
└── genre2
    └── Artist2
        └── (1970) Album2
            ├── 01 - Song1
            └── 02 - Song2

I also usually listen to whole albums at once. Therefore I’d like to be able to search, for instance, for the directory called Album2 and queue it without having to either navigate the directory tree or specify the full path to the directory by hand.

[MaxKellermann]

Not possible. Search results must be songs.
Though you can use a search and match on the file property, which includes the directory. https://mpd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/protocol.html#filters

[TonCherAmi]

Yes, that works perfectly for me, I want directories and songs whose basename matches the search string.

[MaxKellermann]

search gives you the songs, and the directory names are trivial to deduce from there, aren't they?

[TonCherAmi]

So I need to do this after all?

You're suggesting that the client should examine every path segment in every returned path for substring matches?

I mean it's not pretty but I guess it beats caching the entire database on the client..

[MaxKellermann]

So I need to do this after all?

You're suggesting that the client should examine every path segment in every returned path for substring matches?

You asked this question already, and remember my reply? Here's a copy of it:

No no no!

... which effectively means "No, you do not need to do this after all", just in case three times "no" wasn't clear enough. For further explanation, scroll up to re-read my full text response.

[TonCherAmi]

Well, I see no other way of getting the right directories from search 🤷‍♂️
Simply showing parent directories won't work because there could be song matches as well.
search just doesn't do what I want and implementing it client-side seems finicky, that's why I asked whether this could be added to MPD itself.