How can I generate an M3U playlist from the terminal?

Question

I'd like to generate a M3U playlist for a directory containing mp3 files on my server from the terminal. Since I'd like to ensure that every player will be able to stream those files I'd like to prefix each file entry with the absolute URL to that directory, like this:

http://server.com/dir/file1.mp3
http://server.com/dir/file2.mp3
...

So unfortunately simply doing ls -1 *.mp3 > play.m3u isn't enough. Is there a one-liner to achieve this?

Answer 1

I think the following one-liner should work:

for f in *.mp3; do echo "http://..../$f" >> play.m3u; done

Answer 2

You originally asked to create each entry as a web URL formatted line. In addition to replacing the local path with http://..., you'll also need to replace spaces with '%20'. So, long line, but here you go:

find /path/to/mp3s/ -name "*.mp3" | sed 's/ /%20/g' | sed 's|/path/to/mp3s/|http://www.server.com/serverpath/|g' > playlist.m3u

Answer 3

This is @chronitis answer with some improvements :

• stores the file name on the variable $playlist for later use
• will delete the file if exists previously
• writes the full path of the file on the playlist

The command

playlist='play.m3u' ; if [ -f $playlist ]; then rm $playlist ; fi ; for f in *.mp3; do echo "$(pwd)/$f" >> "$playlist"; done

To play it with mplayer on the command line also

mplayer -playlist play.m3u