Spotify Plugin Released! Now with less bugs!

[mr.derek]

raptor you are the best!

Working for me now with the latest plugin:

I had to close rainmeter, delete the plugin, then copy new one in, my folder location was AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Plugins\

Thanks again for all your work with this!

[benjiman0]

Hey man, I was wondering if you could help me, I'm currently running the Monstercat Visualizer plugin with Rainmeter (this one), however the artist, song title, and album do not appear at all. It's consistently shows 'N/A', which is rather annoying, I've been reading your previous posts however they haven't seemed to alleviate the issue.

Windows 8.1 Pro (Build 9600) [Version 6.3.9600]
Spotify 1.0.14.124
SpotifyPlugin.dll 1.2.2.0
Rainmeter 3.3.0 beta r2461 64-bit

This is what my Measures log looks like:


My desktop:


Any help would be appreciated!

[mr.derek]

Hi benjiman0,

I just had a go of the Monstercat spotify skin with the temporary new version of the plugin (see raptor's last post - it's attached - should be 704kb) and all was working:

So try quitting rainmeter, go to your Appdata folder then: AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Plugins\. Make a copy of the Spotifyplugin there and then delete it. Extract the new version there and restart rainmeter.

Hope this helps! Keep in mind raptor has released this version as a temporary fix and is working on a proper release, but this works in the meantime (see his post).

[twitch]

D'oh, there was an old version of the spotify.dll in my program files rainmeter folder, causing rainmeter to ignore the new one in appdata...

After deleting that everything works as expected so far, even without the new increased delay.

[benjiman0]

Hi benjiman0,

I just had a go of the Monstercat spotify skin with the temporary new version of the plugin (see raptor's last post - it's attached - should be 704kb) and all was working:

So try quitting rainmeter, go to your Appdata folder then: AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Plugins\. Make a copy of the Spotifyplugin there and then delete it. Extract the new version there and restart rainmeter.

Hope this helps! Keep in mind raptor has released this version as a temporary fix and is working on a proper release, but this works in the meantime (see his post).

Hey man, so I did that previously however I forgot to mention it, I re-tried without success, however I did manage to download the Debugger, and the Debugger comes up with a different error to that of the timeout issue, the Debugger responds like this:

[.raptor]

If a 3rd-party plugin is in both places, then the one in APPDATA will get preference.

As to versions, that is a bit of a problem today. The skin installer doesn't even try to reconcile versions, and will just happily replace whatever is in APPDATA with whatever is in the .rmskin. That can lead to an "old" version replacing a "new" one.

We are looking at improving that, but in the meantime, the best bet I think is to create a simple "example skin" that uses your plugin, and turn that into a .rmskin. That .rmskin should be kept up to date with any changes / versions you make to the plugin, and kept prominently with your documentation. Folks should be reminded to check the version number of the plugin in About / Plugins in Rainmeter any time they install a skin that uses your plugin, and get that .rmskin and install it if there is a mismatch. That will ensure they have the latest version from you.

After deleting a copy of SpotifyPlugin.dll in programfiles/Rainmeter/plugins some of the issues we have been having seemed to get resolved, so i decided to test out a few things. Built a really simple plugin that outputs its version. When only having one installed in either location, everything works as expected. If i install one version in each, it seems to use the one in program files, while showing both in the about tab. Since the list is quite long and the plugins from appdata is on top of the list, this makes troubleshotting quite hard, as the old version is often hard to spot. I can also only delete the one in appdata, as the other one is "in use" when Rainmeter is running.

PluginVersion.png

This is probably not a common issue, as most developers don't mistakenly ask people to install anything in programfiles . It still seems like unintended behavior, so i thought you might want to know. Attached the plugins i used below.
"PluginVersion " + System.Reflection.Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().GetName().Version.ToString() is the output.

[.raptor]

Hey man, so I did that previously however I forgot to mention it, I re-tried without success, however I did manage to download the Debugger, and the Debugger comes up with a different error to that of the timeout issue, the Debugger responds like this:

Would you mind running it again, without Skype running?

[benjiman0]

Would you mind running it again, without Skype running?

So I managed to find the fix for it, I looked into what would cause an error with network protocols, so I thought Firewall, Windows Defender, and a few other network based applications, then a little notification popped up in the bottom corner. AVG Anti-Virus.

By this stage I was looking for any answer to the problem, so I temporarily disabled it, viola! It works!
So I did a bit more looking into it, and found that AVG's 'LinkScanner' feature automatically looks at links accessed by the system, and by browsers, and determines whether they're trusted to access or not, sort of like a Firewall to the Internet. When I disable LinkScanner but leave AVG running as normal, everything works!
I checked the logs for AVG and it blocks the request for tokens by your plugin to Spotify, as it's considered foreign by AVG. After that it stops, or if upon fail, blocks your entire plugin from making any changes to the system without notifying the user at all.

I've since sent a request to AVG with the log, and also links to this plugin, along with the Rainmeter system so that any applicable exception can be made to assure that LinkScanner can be enabled and your plugin can still function.

However I still have one problem, even though the plugin is working, it isn't communicating with the Rainmeter skins, neither yours provided here, or the Monstercat one.

I ran the debugger in your Rainmeter skin, the window was empty

[flip]

So I managed to find the fix for it, I looked into what would cause an error with network protocols, so I thought Firewall, Windows Defender, and a few other network based applications, then a little notification popped up in the bottom corner. AVG Anti-Virus.

Damnit AVG! I swear it has slowly gone downhill in the last year or two. So... Could you go into a bit more detail on how you disabled link scanner? I might need to update (and hope it doesn't automatically install its toolbar on me *shudder*), but thought I would ask you to see if I was just looking in the wrong place.

Oh and @.raptor this appears to have been the cause of my problem as well.

[benjiman0]

Damnit AVG! I swear it has slowly gone downhill in the last year or two. So... Could you go into a bit more detail on how you disabled link scanner? I might need to update (and hope it doesn't automatically install its toolbar on me *shudder*), but thought I would ask you to see if I was just looking in the wrong place.

Oh and @.raptor this appears to have been the cause of my problem as well.

So when you get into the interface for AVG, you're presented with 5 or so tiles, select web and then turn off LinkScanner...