directory based sort using custom property

[omnigenous]

I have read wiki and found https://github.com/gokcehan/lf/wiki/Tips#sorting-files-by-a-custom-method

But can't implement the solution for my use-case.

I want to sort file ONLY inside "~/Music/ARTIST/ALBUM/*" and custom property is "track id"

I managed to extract "track id" using ffprobe:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/79601915/12038199

ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format input.mp3 | jq -r '.format.tags.track'

Also I'm a bit confused can I only have single custom property? What if I will want to have another custom property for other dir/path or for all paths?

setlocal ~/Music/**/**/ set info size # does this work?

[CatsDeservePets]

Hello @omnigenous!

There are two answers for your questions:

1. You can set info properties per directory like this (no wildcards possible):

# Default `info` setting for every dir unless explicitly specified 
set info perm:user
# Specifically override `info` for "Music"
setlocal ~/Music info custom
# Sort by `custom` (track id) inside "Music" only
setlocal ~/Music sortby custom

Note

You could set info and sortby inside on-load if you really want to use wildcards for it.

---

2. There is only one custom property. It can either be shown or hidden and it can either be empty or not empty (it can even be set but also be hidden to only have custom sorting without changing the looks of info).

To have a different custom property for different directories, your on-load function has to check for the current directory name and act upon that.

Something like this:

cmd on-load &{{
	dir="$(dirname "$1")"
	cd "$dir" || exit 1

	cmds=""
	case "$dir" in
		# Wildcards are working here
		"$HOME"/Music*)
			# Music logic
			for f in "$@"; do
				track=$(ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format "$f" \
					| jq -r '.format.tags.track // empty' 2>/dev/null)
				# Chain calls to set `custom` (more efficient than executing each one individually)
				cmds="${cmds}addcustominfo \"$f\" \"${track:-}\"; "
			done
			;;
		*)
			# Default logic
			;;
	esac

	# Execute remote command if there are any commands to execute
	if [ -n "$cmds" ]; then
		lf -remote "send $id :$cmds"
	fi
}}

[CatsDeservePets]

Hey!
That happens because in my example I set info and sorting for Music, not the artist folders:

# Specifically override `info` for "Music"
setlocal ~/Music info custom
# Sort by `custom` (track id) inside "Music" only
setlocal ~/Music sortby custom

We can use a trick mentioned in lf's docs (which I did forget exists):

Adding a trailing path separator (i.e. / for Unix and \ for
Windows) sets the option for the given directory along with its subdirectories

# Change `info` and `sortby` for "Music" and its subdirectories
setlocal ~/Music/ info custom
setlocal ~/Music/ sortby custom
# Revert it for "Music" again (but not its subdirectories)
setlocal ~/Music info perm:user
setlocal ~/Music sortby natural

---

To set it inside on-load, you will have to add the command to your cmds variable which gets send to lf as a remote command.

case "$dir" in
	"$HOME"/Music/*)
		cmds="setlocal \"$dir\" sortby custom;"
		for f in "$@"; do
			track=$(ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format "$f" \
				| jq -r '.format.tags.track // empty' 2>/dev/null)
			# Chain calls to set `custom` (more efficient than executing each one individually
			cmds="${cmds}addcustominfo \"$f\" \"${track:-}\"; "
		done
		;;

[omnigenous]

Thank you again! The second approach with setting sort order in "on-load" works best for me.

[omnigenous]

The only problem now is that ffprobe little to slow (takes a solid second on 15 files), but that's not related to lf of course 😆

[CatsDeservePets]

I'm glad this works for you!

[CatsDeservePets]

The only problem now is that ffprobe little to slow (takes a solid second on 15 files), but that's not related to lf of course 😆

You could also iterate over the files inside on-init to pre-calculate this on start-up.
Not sure if you would want that every single time lf launches but it is a possibility. Note: You have to slightly tweak your loop and hardcode the directories you want to use.