eunikolsky / rbdb

rbdb is a small tool that parses a Rockbox database and prints the played filenames.

What problem does it solve?

I sync new podcasts from gPodder to an excellent SanDisk Sansa Clip+ player once in a while. Before each sync, I also need to mark played episodes as old (those that I want to keep) or delete played episodes. This program helps me recollect what I listened to because Rockbox stores a database and tracks various runtime information about the present tracks.

Running the program

Currently, no binary releases are provided, so you need to install Haskell Stack (for example, with GHCup) and build the project with stack build. Then stack install can install the executable into ~/.local/bin/; if the directory is in your $PATH, you can simply run rbdb.

$ rbdb -h
Print played podcast episodes from the rockbox database

Usage: rbdb [-f|--filename-only] [--color ARG] ROCKBOX_PATH

Available options:
  -f,--filename-only       Show only filenames (default: false)
  --color ARG              Show colorized output: yes|no|auto (default: auto)
  ROCKBOX_PATH             Path to the rockbox database directory (with
                           `database_*.tcd`)
  --version                Show version
  -h,--help                Show this help text

The program requires the path to a rockbox database, which is a directory with database_*.tcd files. It's the .rockbox/ directory in the root of your player. When it's connected to the computer and mounted, the path will be like /Volumes/player/.rockbox. So providing the path to the program would output something like this:

$ rbdb /Volumes/player/.rockbox
/podcasts/99% Invisible/530- The Panopticon Effect.mp3: 26%, 1 plays
/podcasts/Accidental Tech Podcast/529_ The Cycles of Marco.mp3: 100%, 4 plays
/podcasts/CoRecursive w_ Adam Bell/Story_ JSON vs XML.mp3: 100%, 3 plays
/podcasts/Criminal/Episode 212_ The Fasting Cure.mp3: 100%, 2 plays
/podcasts/FLOSS Weekly/FLOSS Weekly 723_ Freedom to Fork - Open Source Communities & Democracy With Seth Frey.mp3: 99%, 1 plays
/podcasts/The FOSSA Engineering Podcast/Early-Stage Technology Decisions and Regrets.mp3: 100%, 3 plays
/podcasts/Hacker Public Radio/HPR3830_ Into New Mexico.mp3: 100%, 1 plays
/podcasts/Headwaters/Becoming _ Stained by History.mp3: 26%, 1 plays
/podcasts/MapScaping/Geospatial support for humanitarian emergencies.mp3: 75%, 2 plays
/podcasts/Regular Programming/About Tooling.mp3: 100%, 2 plays
/podcasts/This Week in Linux/220_ GNOME 44, Kali Linux, Red Hat 30 Years, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Trisquel 11 & more Linux news!.mp3: 100%, 2 plays
/podcasts/What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law/69- The Mar-a-Lago Warrant.mp3: 100%, 1 plays

The podcasts are sorted the way gPodder does it: case-insensitive, ignoring the "the " prefix if present and replacing certain letter with umlauts to those without (ö => o, ü -> u, ä => a). That's why "The FOSSA Engineering Podcast" appears before "Hacker Public Radio" in the output above.