Just wanted to post a quick update on my progress.
At this point I have the following working, or mostly working:
- Subscribe to a podcast
- Download the episodes to the hard drive
- Add devices, specifying their root directory for podcasts
- Walk the directories under the root and show a list of all files and their paths
- Persist library and device data to the hard drive using JSON serialization
- Query objects using Linq to Objects
Here's what's NOT finished:
- Synchronize podcasts to the device
- Connect to a device that doesn't appear as a drive
That last one is a big sticking point right now. I have two devices from Creative and one from Transcend. The Transcend shows up as a drive. That's nice. The Creative devices show up as Windows Media Devices. That's not nice.
To communicate with such devices (mp3 players, cameras, etc.) you have to use the Windows Media Device Manager APIs. Unfortunately they are NOT implemented in .Net. That means you got some pInvoking to do.
This is the bit I'm working on now. I've never worked with this particular API before (I didn't know there was such a thing before yesterday...), so it may take a bit of fiddling to get moving forward again.
It is a pain in the posterior, but once I get a handle on the API, I'll be back in business.
In the meantime here's a screenshot of the UI. Not pretty, but not entirely WinForms like. Not all super-de-duper WPFy, but functional.
Eventually I'll try to make it look a bit more like that famous fruit inspired music site...