Create playlists for full albums in iTunes (i.e. albums with all songs)
How could I create playlists for all of the albums in iTunes for which I have all of the songs? Assume that track number & track count metadata is accurate where specified, and don't worry about catching tracks which lack that metadata. I assume this will require AppleScript.
I realized this was a complicated enough question I ought to try to skin the cat myself. Here is one approach:
-- Creates a playlist for each full album you have in iTunes
-- Set the playlistPrefix and playlistSuffix as desired before running
-- Based on code by Brad Campbell
-- http://www.bradcampbell.com/2009/05/26/make-a-whole-album-playlist-in-itunes/
tell application "iTunes"
set playlistPrefix to "FA: "
set playlistSuffix to ""
-- The "FA: " prefix will help cluster full albums in iTunes' playlists,
-- and is narrow enough to not get in your way when viewing on an iPhone
set albumBuckets to {} as list
set allSongs to (every track of library playlist 1 whose enabled is true and podcast is false and kind contains "audio") as list
-- Find all partial albums in iTunes
repeat with currentTrack in allSongs
set albumName to album of currentTrack as text
set artistName to artist of currentTrack as text
-- First check for missing values, then perform integer comparison
-- Zero is on the left to force interger type coercion, just in case
if album of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than length of albumName then
if artist of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than length of artistName then
if track number of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than track number of currentTrack then
if track count of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than track count of currentTrack then
if albumBuckets does not contain album of currentTrack then
copy album of currentTrack to the end of albumBuckets
end if
end if
end if
end if
end if
end repeat
repeat with currentAlbum in albumBuckets
set albumSongs to (every track of library playlist 1 whose album is currentAlbum)
set firstTrack to first item of albumSongs
-- Filter album list to act only on full albums
if (count of albumSongs) is equal to track count of first item of albumSongs and 1 is less than (count of albumSongs) then
-- This is a full album, construct the playlist
-- Sort tracks by track number
set albumSongsSorted to {} as list
repeat with i from 1 to (count of albumSongs)
repeat with trk in albumSongs
if track number of trk is i then
set nextSong to trk
copy nextSong to the end of albumSongsSorted
end if
end repeat
end repeat
-- Don't show artist name for compilations
if firstTrack is not compilation then
set playlistNameArtist to artist of firstTrack & " - "
else
set playlistNameArtist to ""
end if
set albumPlaylistName to playlistPrefix & playlistNameArtist & currentAlbum & playlistSuffix
-- Create playlist
if user playlist albumPlaylistName exists then
try
delete tracks of user playlist albumPlaylistName
end try
else
make new user playlist with properties {name:albumPlaylistName}
end if
try
repeat with trk in albumSongsSorted
duplicate trk to user playlist albumPlaylistName
end repeat
end try
end if
end repeat
display dialog "Playlists created! Check iTunes for playlists beginning with '" & playlistPrefix & "'"
end tell
To try this out, just copy and paste the code block into AppleScript Editor and push Run. Do be aware there's no easy "undo" button - you'll have to just hold down the delete key if you want to ditch all the created playlists.
There's probably a faster algorithm (i.e. one that makes only a single pass through iTunes' library) but I couldn't figure how to work with two dimensional variables in AppleScript, which seems like a prerequisite.
A bonus side effect of this script is that it may surface ancient albums in your library you have moved on from and can safely delete :)