Posting Metadata the Web with Center Stage Live (CSL)

CSL supports FTP uploads to post metadata to a web server for use on the stations web page, to be downloaded at an affiliate site as an input source to their CSL system, or to be monitored by other devices and services.

As new events are posted to the stations data casting functions CSL will issue an FTP upload to send two files to the web server. The first is a user definable file with the current now playing information and if desired a second playlist history of the last xxx number of songs the station played. As the data is uploaded to the web server, a local copy may be generated for use in other applications such as daisy chaining multiple instances of CSRDS so one instance of CSRDS outputs metadata for another instance. The local copy is also useful for trouble shooting using the Template Viewer in CSRDS which shows the template as well as the formatted output file.

Current Now Playing
The format for the current event is controlled by a template which is simply a text file in the format required by the receiving device with the Center Stage merge codes where the data is to go. These could be any format such as XML, JSON, character separated value, HTML, etc. For details on templates see the RDS Templates.PDF on the downloads page or in the PDF directory of the Center Stage Live Install set.

Sample Template (CSRAS.TXT template included in install set)<?xml version=’1.0′ encoding=’ISO-8859-1′ ?>
<PlayList>
<Entry Event=”00″
Type=”Playing”
Category=”***TYPE***”
Id=”***CART***”
Title=”***TITLE***”
Artist=”***ARTIST***”
Album=”***ALBUM***”
Composer=”***COMPOSER***”
MusicId=”***MUSICID***”
Label=”***LABEL***”
StationId=”***STN***”
Duration=”***TK(1000)***”
StartTime=”***TME(DDDD MMM DD,YYYY HH:NN:SS)”
/>
</PlayList>
Play List History
In addition to the current now playing upload you may enter a number of previous songs to upload. There are several play list templates included in the install set with the most common being the XML or HTML formats.

Sample Play List XML Posting