26 Jul

Last.fm Recent Album Artwork Plugin

My blog is now running a WordPress plugin that shows the album covers from Last.fm of songs I've recently listened to. There's a lot of plugins out there, but none that I found that did the job of getting the artwork, and certainly not for the most recent albums.

Download the Last.fm recent album artwork plugin

Last.fm Integration

You'll need a Last.fm account and the iScrobbler running to store the recent tracks at Last.fm. To check, you can view the recent tracks feed changing remysharp to your Last.fm username.

Installing

Download the Last.fm recent album artwork plugin and save it in your plugins directory (usually located in wp-content).

Then activate the plugin from the Plugins tab in your WordPress admin tools.

Setup

Through the Options -> Last.fm Recent Albums tab fill out the required fields.

Album Art Cache Settings

You must ensure the directory that you point the plugin to is writable. You can use either full or relative paths for the album artwork.

For example, my album artwork is located at http://remysharp.com/albums/, so my URL is set to:

/albums/

Within my WordPress set up, this is physically located in /home/remy/remysharp.com/htdocs/albums/, but I've set the path to be relative in the settings, so it reads:

albums/

Since the root of my WordPress installation is /home/remy/remysharp.com/htdocs/ this works just fine.

Adding to your Blog

Once the setup is complete, use the get_lastFM_album_artwork() function to add the album artwork to you blog. My blog adds the code as follows (with the setup wrapping the elements with li)

<?php if (function_exists('get_lastFM_album_artwork')) { ?>
<div class="lastfm">
<h3>Recent Albums</h3>
    <ul>
    <?php
        get_lastFM_album_artwork();
    ?>
    </ul>
</div>
<?php } ?>

Behind the Scenes

Behind the scenes the code will only show album artwork if Last.fm have the album associated (there's a number of tracks that don't have that information linked). If there's not enough recent tracks from the feed, the plugin will fill the rest of the albums based on the recently played albums (using timestamps from the artwork files).

The plugin will also avoid showing the same album cover twice.

Problems?

If you have any problems or suggestions or questions about the plugin, please let me know and I'll do my best to help.

54 Responses to “Last.fm Recent Album Artwork Plugin”

Blog Author Remy Sharp July 29th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

Update: I've fixed a small bug where the album art wouldn't load if the album title had a question mark in it.
Dale. August 2nd, 2007 at 5:43 pm

Hey, any chance that you could get the plugin to show track information as well as the album art? I have yet to see a plugin that does both, I want to show track names and artists along with the album art, like this: http://daleanthony.com/sample.jpg

What do you think?

Cheers.
Dale.
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 2nd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
@Dale - sure. If you give me a little while I reckon I should be able to upgrade the plugin to allow you to specify how you want the HTML outputted - i.e. something like:
```
<div>
<div class="track">$track</div>
<div class="artist">$artist</div>
<div class="artwork">$artwork</div>
</div>
```
Then it can be styled appropriately. I'll drop an update on this post when it's ready.
Dale. August 2nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm

Wow! quick response. That's fantastic, thanks a lot
Matt August 10th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

I tried to install the plugin on Wordpress 2.2.2, but without success. There is an fatal error when I try to activate the plugin. Can you give me a hint what could be wrong?
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 10th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

@Matt - can you find the error from your apache logs? I'm running 2.2 - but I can't imagine it 2.2.2 has many differences. If you can send me the sample I'll try to fix the bug.
Matt August 10th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

Unfortunately I don't have access to log files.

But I know now what parts of the code are causing the
problems.

If I comment out 2 to try statements (lines 39-48 and 133-152) as well as the nodevalue function (line 116-118) I can at least activate the plugin.

When I remove the comments again and open the options form I get the following errors:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in /mnt/web1/31/72/5168672/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/lastfmalbumsartwork.php on line 39

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected TOBJECTOPERATOR in /mnt/web1/31/72/5168672/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/lastfmalbumsartwork.php on line 117

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in /mnt/web1/31/72/5168672/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/lastfmalbumsartwork.php on line 133

Hope this helps a bit to nail the bug.
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 12th, 2007 at 9:16 am

@Matt - I think I know what's causing the problem. You're using PHP 4 aren't you? I've used try/catch statements in the plugin - but checking the documentation, that's only supported by PHP 5.

Can you double check this for me. If that's the case, I'll have to look at making it cross compatible (i.e. to work with PHP 4 + 5).
Matt August 12th, 2007 at 11:55 am

Hi Remy,

your assumption is correct.
I switched from PHP4 to PHP5 and the errors were gone.
Dale. August 12th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

Hey, how are the new features coming along? Just thought I would ask... I have just started to code my new blog layout
jared August 12th, 2007 at 10:28 pm

When is the next update coming out? The plugin worked fine on the dev server but the main server is php4 and the plugin will not activate... fatal error
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 14th, 2007 at 10:28 am

@Dale - I've uploaded a new version that supports specifying your own format as discussed.

@Jared - I've modified the plugin to try to detect which version of PHP is running and use the appropriate DOM parser. I don't have an active copy of PHP4 so I've not been able to run any tests. Could you let me know how you get on with the latest version?
Dale-Anthony August 14th, 2007 at 10:53 am

Wohoo... Thanks a lot..

It's all working great, I am having a problem getting it to work with my stylesheet though ( http://www.daleanthony.com/blog/ )
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 14th, 2007 at 11:05 am

@Dale - I've just fixed that now. If you download, you should find version 1.0.2 fixed the slashes appearing in the class attribute.

Oh - and if you want a decent twitter plugin - I've got one
Dale-Anthony August 14th, 2007 at 11:08 am

Perfect, works great.

Thanks again!
jared August 14th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

@Remy - I just downloaded the newest version you released and tried to activate it, still gave me a fatal error =(

I'm going to see if my error logs give me any clues. Right now I am stuck using a different last.fm plugin but it is not near as good as yours!
jared August 14th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

Yeah I just checked, my host is running PHP Version 4.4.7.
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 16th, 2007 at 12:38 am

@Jared - I'm in the process of re-writing the plugin so that it will support PHP4 (I've tweaked my apache so I can run both) and PHP5 - but unfortunately (for me) isn't a quick, straight forward job.

I hope to have it ready within the next few days. Check back here and I'll post when it's ready.

If you're already using this plugin - please visit the official Wordpress plugin page and give it a rating - cheers.
Gareth August 22nd, 2007 at 6:15 pm

Any chance that you could make this plugin into a sidebar widget?
Kimatg August 26th, 2007 at 7:12 am

Is there any possibility that this plugin could be made into a single embeddable script? just so that I could paste the code into an html file and still work fine...
Mike August 28th, 2007 at 5:25 pm

just recently switched to wordpress (from serendipity)... so I have to add code in wordpress templates in order to get plugins visible?
Blog Author Remy Sharp August 30th, 2007 at 8:41 am
@Gareth - I'm not sure about sidebar widgets, I'll have a look.

@Kimatg - you should be able to easily convert the plugin in to a standalone. There are two lines at the end, one commented out and one not - just switch around the comments like so:
```
// add_action('admin_menu', 'lra_admin_menu');
get_lastFM_album_artwork();
```
Then in the get_lastFM_album_artwork function, there's a block where my test variables are - uncomment it, and comment out the code below up to the // code starts comment. That should be it.

@Mike - That's right - you need to insert the code as per the "Adding to your Blog" in the post above.
Theo Jones August 31st, 2007 at 4:25 am

Would love the PHP4 version, I get the error too.

Many thanks.
Ignacio September 8th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Hi there!!
First of all, thanks for this great plugin!!
I have a problem
I'm trying to run it as standalone, I had made a:
```
include_once('lastfm_albums_artwork.php');
```
and in ur .php file I had uncommented ur test variables, and write mines, ofc commented the next get_option lines.
Also in the file's bottom I had commented add_action and uncomment the next line, but I recive this error msg:
```
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECTOPERATOR in /web/htdocs/www.igneo.net/home/lastfmalbums_artwork.php on line 158
```
and its impossible to remove!!! I had tried to put a die; in the first line and the error still appears!
158 line contais:
```
return $context->getElementsByTagName($n)->item(0)->nodeValue;
```
of the funcition nodeValue but I still have the error commenting it or putting a return true;
I don't know what I can do!!
Greets from Spain
Dale September 12th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

Hey, Me again

I just started getting this message on my wordpress, can't even get into my admin panel.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /home/daleanth/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/lastfm_albums_artwork.php on line 158

I don't think I have changes any files recently so not to sure what is causing this.
Blog Author Remy Sharp September 13th, 2007 at 7:55 am

@Dale + @ Ignacio - are you using php 4 or php 5?
Ignacio September 13th, 2007 at 6:01 pm

PHP5, I tried also to remove manually some parts of PHP4 code but I failed also Its more hard that I thought to run it at standalone
Chris September 13th, 2007 at 8:09 pm

Is there any way to make the album art image act as the url as well? without displaying the written url?
Ben September 21st, 2007 at 6:56 am

aha, I'm most likely using php4 - that's my question answered!

Any updates on how the new version is coming?
Jorge September 21st, 2007 at 6:43 pm

Hi,
great plugin. Does anyone knows why the first letters are missing? It would be great if it also fetches the album year ...

Check http://www.gamito.net/blog.
Now i realized that tracks are missing too.

My code is:

$artwork
$artist($year) $album$track

Thanks.
WordPress Plugins Database » Plugin Details » Last.fm Recent Albums and Artwork September 26th, 2007 at 12:18 pm

[...] Visit [...]
Brian October 4th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

Woohoo!! This plugin looks HOT! I've seen the other Last.FM plugins that have the ability to include a timestamp of when the track was played. This one comes to mind:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lastfm-for-wordpress/

Would it be possible to include that? Thanks!!
WP插件:Last.fm Recent Album Artwork | 帕兰的口袋 October 8th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

[...] WP官方下载页面 | 插件作者下载页面 [...]
Dale. October 8th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

Hey again,

How often is this plugin setup to refresh the data? I have listened to a ton of songs today and it hasn't updated my recently played this evening.

Is there an option anywhere to change the frequency of the updates?
Blog Author Remy Sharp October 8th, 2007 at 11:15 pm

@Dale - the update happens each time the page is requested. Once the page is called, and the function called (i.e. from your sidebar), it will pull the RSS feed from last.fm.

Sometimes their feed goes down, or doesn't update - so you might be seeing this.

On the other hand, the plugin is designed not to show the same album artwork twice, so it depends on the songs you've listened too.

Finally, there's logic so say, only display albums that have enough details to get the artwork and album name. Sometimes last.fm don't have all the details, so those albums are skipped over.

I'd recommend checking the feed and seeing what you've got there first. Cheers.
Alex October 19th, 2007 at 10:46 pm

Hi,

I'm using PHP4 as well, and was just wondering how the cross compatible version was coming along? I would love to get this working on my blog!

Alex
Jeremy November 8th, 2007 at 1:20 am

I'm trying to install your plugin to my sidebar. I've changed my username in the PHP file, set up iScrobbler, and And inserted the code into my sidebar but I keep getting and erroe which reads:

Album path must exist and be read/write permissions ()

What should i do?

-JB
Blog Author Remy Sharp November 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
@JB - the 'Album Art Cache' directory needs to have write permissions as done like this (assuming the same directories as the post above):
```
chmod 777 /home/remy/remysharp.com/htdocs/albums/
```
Ian December 7th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Hi,

Great plugin, just what I was looking for. However, I've followed your instructions and I'm getting the following error:
```
  Warning: fileperms() [function.fileperms]: stat failed for /home/user/website.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/lastfm_albums_artwork/ in /home/.orlo/user/website.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/lastfm_albums_artwork.php on line 45
  Album path must exist and be read/write permissions (/home/user/website.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/lastfm_albums_artwork/)
```
#

I know this looks like a file permissions error but I've done a chmod on the newly created directory:

/home/users/website.co.uk/lastfm/

It is currently set to 777. I'm also running PHP 5 and Wordpress 2.3 (latest at the time of writing).

Any ideas what could be wrong?

Cheers
Ian December 7th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

Ok, I've sorted the above problem. It was my own stupid mistake of not pointing the full path to the right directory However, now there are no errors at all but it also isn't displaying any items. I've checked my xml feed and there are items there being updated as I listen but they just aren't showing up on my blog.

I have the following html format:

$artwork
$artist
$track
Zeke December 11th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

I am having the same problem as Dale in comment #25. Trying to activate the plug-in. Dunno re: php4 or 5.
Ian December 12th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

I'm still having the same problem with the title being displayed but not artwork or album information at all - just white space.

I've set the following parameters:

URL: http://website.co.uk/lastfm/

Full Path: /home/users/website.co.uk/lastfm/

The above directory I've done and chmod on to 777 and checked this a million times. I've entered in my correct lastfm account details and double checked this but I still get nothing.

What's going wrong?
Ashley December 13th, 2007 at 3:24 am

This plugin looks great, but I'm stuck with php4 and can't use it, I keep getting an error
Ian December 23rd, 2007 at 10:34 pm

Hi,

I'm still having the same problems I noted earlier this month with regard to this plugin. Can you suggest how I may resolve them? The plugin page on Wordpress says to come here to get problems resolved. I'd just really like to get it working.

Thanks
Stu Greenham January 10th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

Hi there,

any news on sorting the following error....

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /home/daleanth/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/lastfm_albums_artwork.php on line 158

I have php 4.4.7 installed on my server

pleeasee help
stu
jason January 20th, 2008 at 10:38 am

I installed the plugin and followed the instructions, but now the plugin is not displaying anything. I probably just missed a little detail. The path for the URL is: http://www.jasoncypret.com/lastfmArt/

Full path: lastfmArt/

The folder has been created and is set to 777.

-JC
Jason January 21st, 2008 at 10:53 pm

It's working now. Now I just gotta figure out why the URL's are going to a 404 page.

Thanks, it's a great plugin!

-JC
Last.fm Recent Album Artwork_Wordpress plugin January 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm

[...] Plugin Homepage [...]
Plugin Shoutout! | shiruken’s Blog - Colin’s Blog March 19th, 2008 at 1:18 am

[...] Last.FM Recent Albums and Artwork - Displays my most recently played albums from Last.FM with album artwork covers in a highly customizable fashion. Caches them on the site to decrease loading time from image sources. [...]
Ben Reynhart April 11th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Many thanks, great plugin, works great with wordpress 2.5 and latest K2 aswell!!

TIP: if anyone has hosting with both php4 AND php5, but default on php4, you can put "SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 5" in an .htaccess file in your root and it will default to PHP5.
Andy May 2nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm

Hi!
Thanks for your great plugin, it really rocks! Just one thing: I've figured out that $url now has to be ..blabla..artist/_/track and NOT artist/album/track.

After changing it in the code everything works like a charm! Congrats.
Gwen June 23rd, 2008 at 4:05 am

Hi!

My goodness, I don't understand. I give up...

I installed the plugin and followed the instructions with tchmod on to 777 but "Album path must exist and be read/write permissions (/home/gwen-gwen/www.bloguenotes.com/album/)" Arrgh !!!

What's going wrong? Full path?!?

By advance, thanks
DaleAnthony • Blog • DaleAnthony.com V3 ‘Retro’ June 26th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

[...] Last.fm Recent Albums and Artwork by Remy Sharp [...]
DaleAnthony.com V3 ‘Retro’ | abe design studio July 10th, 2008 at 8:15 am

[...] Last.fm Recent Albums and Artwork by Remy Sharp [...]