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# Inline Plugin

The `inline` plugin lets you use Python to customize your path formats. Using it, you can define template fields in your beets configuration file and refer to them from your template strings in the `paths:` section (see Configuration).

To use the `inline` plugin, enable it in your configuration (see Using Plugins). Then, make a `item_fields:` block in your config file. Under this key, every line defines a new template field; the key is the name of the field (you’ll use the name to refer to the field in your templates) and the value is a Python expression or function body. The Python code has all of a track’s normal fields in scope, so you can refer to these attributes (such as `artist` or `title`) as Python variables. The Python code also has direct access to the item or album object as `db_obj`. This allows use of computed fields and plugin fields, for example, `db_obj.albumtotal`, or `db_obj.missing` if the Missing Plugin plugin is enabled.

Here are a couple of examples of expressions:

    item_fields:
        initial: albumartist[0].upper() + u'.'
        disc_and_track: f"{disc:02d}.{track:02d}" if disctotal > 1 else f"{track:02d}"

Note that YAML syntax allows newlines in values if the subsequent lines are indented.

These examples define `$initial` and `$disc_and_track` fields that can be referenced in path templates like so:

    paths:
        default: $initial/$artist/$album%aunique{}/$disc_and_track $title

## Block Definitions

If you need to use statements like `import`, you can write a Python function body instead of a single expression. In this case, you’ll need to `return` a result for the value of the path field, like so:

    item_fields:
        filename: |
            import os
            from beets.util import bytestring_path
            return bytestring_path(os.path.basename(path))

You might want to use the YAML syntax for “block literals,” in which a leading `|` character indicates a multi-line block of text.

## Album Fields

The above examples define fields for item templates, but you can also define fields for album templates. Use the `album_fields` configuration section. In this context, all existing album fields are available as variables along with `items`, which is a list of items in the album.

This example defines a `$bitrate` field for albums as the average of the tracks’ fields:

    album_fields:
        bitrate: |
            total = 0
            for item in items:
                total += item.bitrate
            return total / len(items)