4.1 Creating CDs

The Doodah database was originally designed to search for MP3s stored on a library of CDs. Because of this each MP3 must be entered in the database as in a directory and filename relative to a CD. However, it doesn't have to be used in this way because you can just enter all the MP3s on to one CD and set that CD's directory to wherever the MP3s are stored. You could also use the CD field to store other information. For example, you could store all your sixties songs on one imaginary CD, even if they are really all in the same directory.

So before you can add MP3s to the database you need to create a CD. This is done with doodaha and the newcd command. The newcd command takes three arguments: name, directory and url. The name argument is what doodah will call the new CD, eg `sixtiescd'. The directory argument is an absolute path to where the CD will normally be accessed, such as `/cdrom/'. The URL argument should be `yes' or `no' and sets whether the doodah program should pass the filename as a URL. This is used when the MP3s should be accessed through HTTP. If it is `yes', it will encode the filename as a URL by replacing special characters with the hexadecimal code, eg a space will become `%20'.

The following example creates a CD called `sixtiescd' which will be stored in the directory `cdrom'.

> doodaha -v -u doodah -p -d doodah newcd sixtiescd /cdrom no Building command list Enter password: Executing commands Executing `NewCd sixtiescd /cdrom false'

The command arguments set verbose on, use the user `doodah' and the database `doodah' and execute the command newcd.