From: Robin Stocker <robin@...>
Date: 2006-07-06T23:35:11+09:00
Subject: Re: MP3 - ID 2 or 3 tags

Dark Ambient wrote:
> I found the ID3lib on rubyforge which looks pretty good.  Could I just
> forgoe the library though and do this through standard FILE class ?
> 
> Stuart

Hey,

I wouldn't recommend doing the parsing yourself, because there are 
various versions of the ID3 standard (ID3v1, ID3v2.2.0, ID3v2.3.0, etc) 
and ID3v2 is not a too simple format. The difficulty of doing it 
yourself depends on what files you have and whether you also want to be 
able to write ID3 data or not.

Rather use a library for the task, here are two you can try:

http://rubyforge.org/projects/id3lib-ruby/
http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-mp3info/

id3lib-ruby is based on the id3lib C++ library, so you have an 
additional dependency there. Other than that, I'm its developer and can 
recommend it of course ;)

ruby-mp3info is written in Ruby, so you don't have any additional 
dependencies. I don't know very much about its interface or stability, 
but give it a try.

Regards,
   Robin Stocker