Introduction:
This is the second of a two part tutorial on how to create a custom music playlist and player in Visual Basic.

Note:
Our Visual Basic player will simply use the Windows Media Player control and this series is going to be mainly focusing on the IO. If you're only interested in custom music players, it may save you time by skipping this series.

This Tutorial:
This part will be covering the loading and playing of playlists.

Components:
You will want one button to begin the loading process/function, and a Windows Media Player component as well, named 'AxWindowsMediaPlayer1'. To add the component, you may need to add the reference by going to:
Project > Add Reference > COM Components > Windows Media Player

Imports:
First we need to import System.IO to read/write to/from files later on, we do this like so...

1. Imports System.IO, WMPLib
   

Loading Playlists:
All of this code can go on one simple button click.

First we want to allow the user to select a .txt playlist file so we create a new openfiledialog, set the filter and properties and then display.

Next we verify that the selected file exists, and read the lines to a new list(of string) named 'lines'.

Finally we then want to iterate through each string line in our 'lines' string list, convert each one to the correct object format with the full music path, and add it to a new playlist of the correct object type for the windows media player playlist. We then set the current playist to the newly created playlist, it will automatically begin to play.

1. Private
   
   Function
   
   loadPlaylist()
   
2. Dim
   
   username As
   
   String
   
   = Environ("username"
   
   )
   
3. Dim
   
   musicPath As
   
   String
   
   = "C:\users\"
   
   + username + "\music"
   
4. Dim
   
   Playlist As
   
   IWMPPlaylist = AxWindowsMediaPlayer1.playlistCollection.newPlaylist("thePlaylist"
   
   )
   
5. Dim
   
   path As
   
   String
   
   = Nothing
   
6. Using fo As
   
   New
   
   OpenFileDialog
   
7. fo.Filter = "Text Files | *.txt"
   
8. fo.FilterIndex = 1
   
9. fo.RestoreDirectory = True
   
10. fo.Multiselect = False
    
11. fo.ShowDialog()
    
12. path = fo.FileName
    
13. End
    
    Using
    
14. Dim
    
    lines As
    
    New
    
    List(Of String
    
    )
    
15. Using sr As
    
    New
    
    StreamReader(path)
    
16. While
    
    (sr.Peek <> -1)
    
17. lines.Add(sr.ReadLine())
    
18. End
    
    While
    
19. End
    
    Using
    
20. For
    
    Each
    
    FilePath As
    
    String
    
    In
    
    lines
    
21. Dim
    
    VideoFile As
    
    WMPLib.IWMPMedia3 = AxWindowsMediaPlayer1.newMedia(musicPath + FilePath)
    
22. Playlist.appendItem(VideoFile)
    
23. Next
    
24. AxWindowsMediaPlayer1.currentPlaylist = Playlist
    
25. End
    
    Function
    

Running the Function:
On the button click we simply call the function...

1. Private
   
   Sub
   
   Button4_Click(sender As
   
   Object
   
   , e As
   
   EventArgs) Handles Button4.Click
   
2. loadPlaylist()
   
3. End
   
   Sub