Spotify App API: Creating a player of top tracks from an artist

Question

I am having difficulties with both Toplists and Image right now and I am hoping that someone can help me. Essentially, all I want to do is create a player and playlist with an artists top tracks. I have tried using search since I can't get the desired behaviour out of Toplists, but that hasn't bought me any closer so I thought I'd ask here.

Essentially, the functionality should:

1. Take an artist name or artist id
2. Find that artists top 10 tracks
3. Create a new temporary playlist and add the 10 tracks
4. Create and insert a player and a playlist

This would seem pretty easy, but it's driving me a little nuts.

Answer 1

You can use the Toplist.forArtist function for fetching the top 10 tracks by an artist.

The following code fetches the first 10 top tracks for an artist and renders a list view and a player:

require(['$api/toplists#Toplist', '$views/list#List', '$views/image#Image'],
  function(Toplist, List, Image) {

  var artist = models.Artist.fromURI('spotify:artist:2qk9voo8llSGYcZ6xrBzKx');
  var toplist = Toplist.forArtist(artist);

  // fetch the 10 most played tracks
  toplist.tracks.snapshot(0, 10).done(function(tracks) {

    // create temporary playlist
    models.Playlist
      .createTemporary('myTempList')
      .done(function(playlist){ 
        playlist.load('tracks').done(function(){
          for (var i = 0, l = tracks.length; i < l; i++) {
              var track = tracks.get(i);
              playlist.tracks.add(track);
          }

          // append a list view
          var listWrapper = document.getElementById('list-wrapper');
          var list = List.forPlaylist(playlist);
          listWrapper.appendChild(list.node);
          list.init();

          // append a player
          // note that you might have a grey placeholder
          // see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17477655
          var playerWrapper = document.getElementById('player-wrapper');
          var player = Image.forPlaylist(playlist, {player: true});
          playerWrapper.appendChild(player.node);
      });
    });
  });
});

The JS code refers to 2 placeholders that will contain the views:

    <div id="list-wrapper"></div>
    <div id="player-wrapper"></div>

Note that due to a problem with mosaic cover images for temporary playlist you may need to replace the default cover placeholder with another image.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, it appears you'll have to brute-force it.

• Get all tracks by the artist, either by:
  • iterating all of the Artist's albums, appearances, compilations, singles and collecting all the tracks
  • Use the poorly-documented-but-probably-easy-to-guess Search module and search for the artist, hopefully getting all their tracks. Here's the advanced search docs
• Retrieve the popularity of all the tracks
• Find the ten highest popularity tracks