Playslave API

Playslave API

General

• An implementation of playslave uses a text-based protocol, for reasons of ease of debugging, manual control of playslave without a frontend, and transparency.
• The API is separated into requests, sent from the frontend/user to playslave, and responses, sent from playslave to the frontend/user.
• Requests and responses both take the form WORD arg1 arg2… argn, where arguments are either single words or quoted strings (use \" to escape a string), and WORD is a four-character identifier (lowercase for requests, uppercase for responses).

Requests

play

• Syntax: play
• Valid when: stopped

Plays the currently loaded file from its current position.

stop

• Syntax: stop
• Valid when: playing

Stops the currently loaded file. Does not reset the position or unload the file. (As such, it is closer to a pause in conventional audio players).

To effect a ‘proper’ stop, follow the stop with a seek 0.

load

• Usage: load FILE
• Valid when: in any state
• Example: load /home/mattbw/Music/Violinski/Clog Dance - The Very Best of Violinski/01 - Clog Dance.mp3

Loads the audio file whose path is given as the sole argument. The path must be absolute, and shell globs/tildes/etc are not parsed.

ejct

• Syntax: ejct
• Valid when: not ejected

Unloads the current audio file, stopping it if it is playing.

seek

• Syntax: seek TIME
• Valid when: not ejected
• Examples: seek 10secs, seek 1m, seek 0

Seeks to a position in the file. The position can either be an integer, in which case it is taken as a number of microseconds, or an integer followed by one of the following unit suffices:

• us, usec, usecs: Microseconds
• ms, msec, msecs: Milliseconds
• s, sec, secs: Seconds
• m, min, mins: Minutes
• h, hour, hours: Hours

quit

• Syntax: quit
• Valid when: in any state

Quits the player.

Responses

OHAI

• Syntax: OHAI MESSAGE

TIME

• Syntax: TIME MICROSECONDS

TTFN

• Syntax: TTFN MESSAGE

WHAT

• Syntax: WHAT MESSAGE