Very Simple PHP Audio Player (With Playlist)

Welcome to a tutorial on how to create a simple PHP audio player. Want to create your own podcast or playlist? Once upon a time, we have to fight with digital dragons and use all sorts of plugins to do that. But today, it is nearly as simple as using an <audio> tag. Read on for the example!

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Source code on GitHub Gist

Just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

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STEP 1) THE PHP & HTML

<div id="demo">
  <!-- (A) AUDIO TAG -->
  <audio id="demoAudio" controls></audio>
 
  <!-- (B) PLAYLIST -->
  <div id="demoList"><?php
    // (B1) GET ALL SONGS
    $songs = glob("audio/*.{mp3,webm,ogg,wav}", GLOB_BRACE);
 
    // (B2) OUTPUT SONGS IN <DIV>
    if (is_array($songs)) { foreach ($songs as $k=>$s) {
      $name = basename($s);
      printf("<div data-src='%s' class='song'>%s</div>", rawurlencode($name), $name);
    }} else { echo "No songs found!"; }
  ?></div>
</div>

Yep, there are only 2 components for this simple example.

1. The audio player, good old <audio> tag.
2. The playlist.
   • We will use $songs = glob("audio/*.{mp3,webm,ogg,wav}", GLOB_BRACE) to get the list of songs from the audio folder. Take note, glob will not recursively read into sub-folders.
   • Then, loop through $songs and generate the playlist. Take note of the custom data-src here.

 

 

STEP 2) JAVASCRIPT PLAYLIST INIT

var aud = {
  // (A) INITIALIZE PLAYER
  player : null,   // html <audio> element
  playlist : null, // html playlist
  now : 0,         // current song
  init : () => {
    // (A1) GET HTML ELEMENTS
    aud.player = document.getElementById("demoAudio");
    aud.playlist = document.querySelectorAll("#demoList .song");
 
    // (A2) LOOP THROUGH ALL THE SONGS, CLICK TO PLAY
    for (let i=0; i<aud.playlist.length; i++) {
      aud.playlist[i].onclick = () => aud.play(i);
    }
 
    // (A3) AUTO PLAY WHEN SUFFICIENTLY LOADED
    aud.player.oncanplay = aud.player.play;
 
    // (A4) AUTOPLAY NEXT SONG IN PLAYLIST WHEN CURRENT SONG ENDS
    aud.player.onended = () => {
      aud.now++;
      if (aud.now>=aud.playlist.length) { aud.now = 0; }
      aud.play(aud.now);
    };
  }
};
window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", aud.init);

Unfortunately, <audio> does not support playlists at the time of writing. So we will need to build our own, var aud contains the mechanics of our custom playlist player.

• (A1) Get the HTML elements.
  • aud.player refers to <audio id="demoAudio">.
  • aud.playlist is an HTMLCollection of songs contained in <div id="demoList">.
  • The idea is to use aud.now to track the current song playing in aud.playlist. For example, aud.now = 0 will indicate the first song, aud.now = 1 indicates the second, and so on.
• (A2) Loop through all the songs, attach “click to play” onclick = aud.play.
• (A3) Just a bit of precaution here, we wait until the song is sufficiently buffered before playing.
• (A4) When the current song ends, we do a aud.now++ and play the next song automatically.

 

 

STEP 3) PLAY SONG

// (B) START PLAYING
aud.play : id => {
  // (B1) UPDATE CURRENT & PLAY
  aud.now = id;
  aud.player.src = "audio/" + aud.playlist[id].dataset.src;
 
  // (B2) A LITTLE BIT OF COSMETIC
  for (let i=0; i<aud.playlist.length; i++) {
    if (i==id) { aud.playlist[i].classList.add("now"); }
    else { aud.playlist[i].classList.remove("now"); }
  }
};

Lastly, we have a function that plays the song itself. Very simply, we set aud.play.src to the selected data-src. The end. aud.player.oncanplay will automatically start playing once sufficiently buffered.

 

 

CUSTOMIZING THE AUDIO PLAYER?

Take extra note that <audio> cannot be styled or customized (at the time of writing). But we can build one ourselves, check out the custom audio player link below.

 

 

COMPATIBILITY CHECKS

• HTML Audio Element – CanIUse
• Arrow Functions – CanIUse

Works on all modern “Grade A” browsers.

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

• <audio>: The Embed Audio element – MDN
• Custom Audio Player With Playlist – Code Boxx
• Need to read sub-folders? Check out List Files & Folders In PHP – Code Boxx