Last.fm API no longer returning now playing track for user.getRecentTracks

[rikkit]

Integration test TrackUpdateNowPlayingCommandTests.UpdatesNowPlaying is failing.

API takes a parameter called page. Behaviour of API used to be that when page=1, the response would be the same as page=0 prepended with the "now playing" track.

For page=0, the API now responds with:

{"error":6,"message":"page param out of bounds (1-1000000)","links":[]}

And page=1 does not contain the "now playing" track.

[rikkit]

Need to investigate alternatives for this

[klinge]

According to last.fm api pages "now playing" is now showed by passing a parameter in the call to GetRecentTracks.

Get a list of the recent tracks listened to by this user. Also includes the currently playing track with the nowplaying="true" attribute if the user is currently listening.

I'll add support for this.

[klinge]

I did some testing of the Last.fm api for this. It seems that the "now playing" track is always returned regardless of if you send the nowplaying="true" parameter to the api or not. Example on return dataset from calling the User.getRecentTracks without adding the nowplaying parameter:

{
    "recenttracks": {
        "track": [
            {
                "artist": {
                    "#text": "NRBQ",
                    "mbid": "4777dc1b-2533-4189-9062-c1b2b477d5c5"
                },
                "name": "Magnet",
                "streamable": "0",
                "mbid": "343153c0-a37f-4e67-a37e-2d342ddb8f1c",
                "album": {
                    "#text": "Scraps",
                    "mbid": "bc2537dd-af30-31d5-a28b-59ed0fc24fb5"
                },
                "url": "https://www.last.fm/music/NRBQ/_/Magnet",
                "image": [
                    {
                        "#text": "https://lastfm-img2.akamaized.net/i/u/34s/20712fa872a14e87af90d46269593d34.png",
                        "size": "small"
                    },
                    {
                        "#text": "https://lastfm-img2.akamaized.net/i/u/64s/20712fa872a14e87af90d46269593d34.png",
                        "size": "medium"
                    },
                    {
                        "#text": "https://lastfm-img2.akamaized.net/i/u/174s/20712fa872a14e87af90d46269593d34.png",
                        "size": "large"
                    },
                    {
                        "#text": "https://lastfm-img2.akamaized.net/i/u/300x300/20712fa872a14e87af90d46269593d34.png",
                        "size": "extralarge"
                    }
                ],
                "@attr": {
                    "nowplaying": "true"
                }
            },

So the "now playing" track is returned. There is a value in the @attr for marking that it is the now playing song.

I made a unit test to check that the existing code handles this response correctly. It does. Will make a PR with the unit test. With the current behaviour of the last.fm api I think this issue can be closed.

[rikkit]

Thanks for looking into this @klinge - I think this behaviour has changed a bit over the last few months, so it might be worth adding an integration test? One that'll fail if the API behaviour changes.

[klinge]

Integration testing would sort of require that you had a user that you knew always had a song playing. Otherwise you will not get the "nowplaying" attribute. The "RJ" user does not have that. If you can think of a good way to do an integration test I'd be happy to implement it :)

[rikkit]

I just realised that the integration test for track.updateNowPlaying (what this issue is about) is exactly the same test as I'm suggesting you write - so no extra test needed :)

For future ref though, the base class for the integration tests authenticates with the user inflatabledemo - you can use that account to test stuff like this.

[klinge]

Never used or looked at the scrobble functions in the library. Will have to do that sometime.. :) Should I still make a PR for the added unit test I made for the "nowplaying" attribute in the user.getrecenttracks command? (it's just one added test and a json resource file.. )

[fuuman]

I can reproduce the response from the original post.

I want to receive the currently playing song. But recent tracks doesn't deliver that, Page 0 is out of bounds. Page 1 doesn't contain it.

Is there any endpoint that provides me the currently played track?