Building a music player with JavaScript MVC

23 Sep 2023

In this blog post, we will explore how to build a music player using JavaScript, specifically with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. With the rise of streaming services and the popularity of music apps, creating a music player using JavaScript MVC can provide a flexible and scalable solution.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of JavaScript and the MVC pattern. Familiarity with HTML and CSS will also be useful for the user interface (UI) development.

Getting Started

First, let’s set up the project structure. Create a new directory for your project and inside it, create the following files:

- index.html
- app.js
- styles.css

Open index.html and add the basic structure to build our UI. Link the styles.css file and include a container div element with a class of “player-container”.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Music Player</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css">
</head>
<body>
    <div class="player-container">
        <!-- Your UI elements will be added here -->
    </div>

    <script src="app.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Next, let’s define the structure of our model, which will hold information about the tracks and their associated metadata. Open app.js and create a JavaScript object to represent the model.

const model = {
    tracks: [
        {
            id: 1,
            title: "Song 1",
            artist: "Artist 1",
            duration: 240
        },
        {
            id: 2,
            title: "Song 2",
            artist: "Artist 2",
            duration: 320
        },
        // Add more tracks as needed
    ],
    currentTrack: null,
    // Add more properties and methods as needed
};

Now, let’s define the view that will render the UI based on the model’s current state. Add the following code to the app.js file.

const view = {
    renderPlayer: function() {
        const container = document.querySelector('.player-container');
        container.innerHTML = '';

        const playerHTML = document.createElement('div');
        playerHTML.innerHTML = `<h1>${model.currentTrack.title}</h1>
                                <p>By ${model.currentTrack.artist}</p>
                                <p>Duration: ${model.currentTrack.duration} seconds</p>`;
        container.appendChild(playerHTML);
    }
    // Add more view methods as needed
};

Finally, let’s create the controller that will handle user interactions and update the model and view accordingly.

const controller = {
    init: function() {
        model.currentTrack = model.tracks[0];
        view.renderPlayer();
        // Add event listeners and other initialization code here
    },
    // Add controller methods as needed
};

controller.init();

Conclusion

In this blog post, we learned how to build a music player using JavaScript MVC. By separating the concerns of the model, view, and controller, we can create a modular and maintainable application. Remember to organize your code, handle user interactions, and update the view accordingly. Feel free to extend the functionality of the player by adding new features and methods to the model, view, and controller.