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Location and Selected Item

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[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

Windows Media Player uses the following five items to characterize its current view of online store content:

  • task
  • library location type
  • library location ID
  • selected item type
  • selected item ID

Typically, you can think of the view in Windows Media Player as a container of items. The container has a type, and an item has a type. All the items in a container have the same type. Location types and item types are both specified by the library location constants. For example, if the current view is showing an individual album, the library location type is CPAlbumID, and, because an album contains tracks, the selected item type is CPTrackID.

The following table shows the location and item types for several containers.

Description of container Library location type Selected item type
An album that is a container of tracks CPAlbumID CPTrackID
A list that is a container of tracks CPListID CPTrackID
A list that is a container of albums CPListID CPAlbumID
A radio station that is a container of lists CPRadioID CPListID
The set of all albums, which is a container of albums AllCPAlbumIDs CPAlbumID
The set of all genres, which is a container of genres AllCPGenreIDs CPGenreID

 

The tabs in Windows Media Player represent different tasks. The Player displays online store content in three different task panes: Library, Burn, and Sync. The Library task pane is also called the Browse task pane. Sometimes, a task pane is called a feature, so you might see terms like Burn feature and Sync feature in this documentation.

The following examples show how Windows Media Player uses the five pieces of information (task, library location type, library location ID, selected item type, selected Item ID) to characterize different views.

In the Burn task pane, the Player is displaying an album as a container of tracks. The album has an ID of 250. In the view, the selected item is the track that has an ID of 800. Note that 800 is the ID of the track in the online store's catalog, not the number of the track on the album.

Item Value
task Burn
library location type CPAlbumID
library location ID 250
selected item type CPTrackID
selected item ID 800

 

In the Sync task pane, the Player is displaying the set of all albums, which is a container of albums. In the view, the selected item is the album that has an ID of 300. Note that the library location ID is not applicable to this view.

Item Value
task Sync
library location type AllCPAlbumIDs
library location ID N/A
selected item type CPAlbumID
selected item ID 300

 

In the tree-view control, the root node for the online store is selected. In this case, there is no container, and consequently, there are no items. The entire Library task pane is displaying a discovery page.

Item Value
task Browse
library location type RootLocation
library location ID N/A
selected item type UnknownLocation
selected item ID N/A

 

In the Sync task pane, the Player is displaying the year 2002 as a container of tracks. In the view, the selected item is the track that has an ID of 450.

Item Value
task Sync
library location type ReleaseDateYear
library location ID 2002
selected item type CPTrackID
selected item ID 450

 

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