[IDEA] 'moodeutl -U' to GUI

[Busybox]

After being annoyed by various radio stations going off the air, both temporarily and permanently, I think it would be nice to check their online status from the GUI without having to ssh into moode and run 'moodeutl -U.'

In the 'Radio Manager' screen, it would be nice to have a button that would check all radio stations. This will take a while so there would need to be some way to indicate progress. After the scan completed, offline stations would be grayed-out in both the station list and the main screen playlist if they were present there. Or the stations could be grayed-out one by one as their status was checked.

It would also be nice to add an item to each station's "..." menu, to check if that individual station was online without actually playing it. After the check, the station's display would be grayed-out or normal depending on its status.

- Steve

[Tim Curtis]

The essence of the idea is sound. The part that I'm not sure of is what to do when the station is flagged as "offline". That could be due to any of the following:

- Playable URL has been changed by the broadcaster
- Station is temporarily offline
- Station has been decommissioned and not broadcasting anymore
- Network issues causing false offline status

I think having a "Check stations" option in Radio Manager might be a good start. It would be running moodeutl -U behind the scenes.

[kiwipaul]

The essence of the idea is sound. The part that I'm not sure of is what to do when the station is flagged as "offline". That could be due to any of the following:

- Playable URL has been changed by the broadcaster
- Station is temporarily offline
- Station has been decommissioned and not broadcasting anymore
- Network issues causing false offline status

I think having a "Check stations" option in Radio Manager might be a good start. It would be running moodeutl -U behind the scenes.

While we are talking about radio stations, is there a way to back them up?

[Tim Curtis]

Use the "Export radio stations" option in Radio Manager.

[kiwipaul]

Use the "Export radio stations" option in Radio Manager.

That is very obvious now you mention it. Thanks.

[Busybox]

The essence of the idea is sound. The part that I'm not sure of is what to do when the station is flagged as "offline". That could be due to any of the following:

- Playable URL has been changed by the broadcaster
- Station is temporarily offline
- Station has been decommissioned and not broadcasting anymore
- Network issues causing false offline status

I think having a "Check stations" option in Radio Manager might be a good start. It would be running moodeutl -U behind the scenes.

Yeah, I don't know if it's reasonable or even possible to explain why a station is offline within moode. But just notifying users that a station is offline will allow them to dig into things further if they're interested. I'm guessing that 80% of the stations that are offline aren't of interest to any particular user, but they can look into the other 20% that are of interest to them as they see fit.

A general "check stations" function would be handy. I'm guessing that users would only check individual stations that were grayed-out from being previously tagged as offline, to see if they had come back online somehow. But coding would probably be simplified if all stations were tested in the same way, whether offline or not.

- Steve