mopidy/mopidy-spotify

Searching for exact matches

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#11 opened on Jan 7, 2014

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 (7 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)Python (879 stars) (103 forks)batch import
C-enhancementHelp neededgood first issue

Description

When using MPD's find command the results are supposed to be an exact match of the query but due to limitations in Spotify's searching you actually get partial matches more akin to SQL's LIKE operator.

e.g. Searching for "Opposite of December" gives you results from two albums:

  • "Opposite of December"
  • "The Opposite Of December / Tear From The Red"

This is pretty annoying when you browse an artist's album in MPD clients and get wrong and duplicate tracks entries.

I know of no way to force exact matching in Spotify queries so maybe we could further filter the results returned to us in find_exact()? Similarly, we could also filter by the fields that Spotify queries don't support i.e. track_no. The motivation for this being that much larger amounts of data are returned to the client than are necessary and it just slows things down. This also combines with the first problem and you can get the full track info for loads of unwanted tracks!

Contributor guide

Tech stack
python
Domain
backendsearch
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of PythonUnderstanding of MPD's find commandFamiliarity with Spotify Web APIAbility to filter data structures in Python
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
50
Research direction
Investigate the find exact() function in the mopidy spotify backend. The current implementation likely passes the query directly to Spotify's search API. To enforce exact matching, filter results by comparing track or album name exactly to the query. Also consider filtering by other fields like track no to reduce data. Review Spotify Web API search documentation and existing test files to understand search behavior.