Retrieve list of songs ordered by last play time in iOS

Question

I need to obtain a list of the N most recently played songs from an iOS device, in order.

The only way I can imagine doing it, at the moment, is by getting

Answer 1

One way is to take the array of MPMediaItems you get from the MPMediaQuery and sort it by MPMediaItemPropertyLastPlayedDate using an NSSortDescriptor:

NSTimeInterval start  = [[NSDate date] timeIntervalSince1970];

MPMediaQuery *songsQuery = [MPMediaQuery songsQuery];
NSArray *songsArray = [songsQuery items];

NSSortDescriptor *sorter = [NSSortDescriptor sortDescriptorWithKey:MPMediaItemPropertyLastPlayedDate
                                                         ascending:NO];
NSArray *sortedSongsArray = [songsArray sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:@[sorter]];

NSTimeInterval finish = [[NSDate date] timeIntervalSince1970];
NSLog(@"Execution took %f seconds.", finish - start);

This sorts the new array by most recently played first. I tested this on a iPhone 4S using 2000 songs and it took .98 seconds.