libvlc and dbus interface - python

I'm trying a to create a basic media player using libvlc which will be controlled through dbus. I'm using the gtk and libvlc bindings for python. The code is based on the official example from the vlc website
The only thing I modified is to add the dbus interface to the vlc instance
# Create a single vlc.Instance() to be shared by (possible) multiple players.
instance = vlc.Instance()
print vlc.libvlc_add_intf(instance, "dbus"); // this is what i added. // returns 0 which is ok
All is well, the demo works and plays any video files. but for some reason the dbus control module doesn't work (I can't believe I just said the dreaded "doesn't work" words):
I already have the working client dbus code which binds to the MPRIS 2 interface. I can control a normal instance of a VLC media player - that works just fine, but with the above example nothing happens. The dbus control module is loaded properly, since libvlc_add_intf doesn't return an error and i can see the MPRIS 2 service in D-Feet (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc).
Even in D-Feet, trying to call any of the methods of the dbus vlc object returns no error but nothing happens.
Do I need to configure something else in order to make the dbus module control the libvlc player?
Thanks
UPDATE
It seems that creating the vlc Instance and setting a higher verbosity, shows that the DBus calls are received but they have no effect whatsoever on the player itself.
Also, adding the RC interface to the instance instead of DBus, has some problems too: When I run the example from the command line it drops me to the RC interface console where i can type the control commands, but it has the same behaviour as DBus - nothing happens, no error, nada, absolutely nothing. It ignores the commands completely.
Any thoughts?
UPDATE 2
Here is the code that uses libvlc to create a basic player:
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
import gtk
import gobject
import sys
import vlc
from gettext import gettext as _
# Create a single vlc.Instance() to be shared by (possible) multiple players.
instance = vlc.Instance("--one-instance --verbose 2")
class VLCWidget(gtk.DrawingArea):
"""Simple VLC widget.
Its player can be controlled through the 'player' attribute, which
is a vlc.MediaPlayer() instance.
"""
def __init__(self, *p):
gtk.DrawingArea.__init__(self)
self.player = instance.media_player_new()
def handle_embed(*args):
if sys.platform == 'win32':
self.player.set_hwnd(self.window.handle)
else:
self.player.set_xwindow(self.window.xid)
return True
self.connect("map", handle_embed)
self.set_size_request(640, 480)
class VideoPlayer:
"""Example simple video player.
"""
def __init__(self):
self.vlc = VLCWidget()
def main(self, fname):
self.vlc.player.set_media(instance.media_new(fname))
w = gtk.Window()
w.add(self.vlc)
w.show_all()
w.connect("destroy", gtk.main_quit)
self.vlc.player.play()
DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default = True)
gtk.gdk.threads_init()
gobject.MainLoop().run()
if __name__ == '__main__':
if not sys.argv[1:]:
print "You must provide at least 1 movie filename"
sys.exit(1)
if len(sys.argv[1:]) == 1:
# Only 1 file. Simple interface
p=VideoPlayer()
p.main(sys.argv[1])
the script can be run from the command line like:
python example_vlc.py file.avi
The client code which connects to the vlc dbus object is too long to post so instead pretend that i'm using D-Feet to get the bus connection and post messages to it.
Once the example is running, i can see the players dbus interface in d-feet, but i am unable to control it. Is there anything else that i should add to the code above to make it work?

I can't see your implementation of your event loop, so it's hard to tell what might be causing commands to not be recognized or to be dropped. Is it possible your threads are losing the stacktrace information and are actually throwing exceptions?
You might get more responses if you added either a psuedo-code version of your event loop and DBus command parsing or a simplified version?

The working programs found on nullege.com use ctypes. One which acted as a server used rpyc. Ignoring that one.
The advantages of ctypes over dbus is a huge speed advantage (calling the C library code, not interacting using python) as well as not requiring the library to implement the dbus interface.
Didn't find any examples using gtk or dbus ;-(
Notable examples
PyNuvo vlc.py
Milonga Tango DJing program
Using dbus / gtk
dbus uses gobject mainloop, not gtk mainloop. Totally different beasts. Don't cross the streams! Some fixes:
Don't need this. Threads are evil.
gtk.gdk.threads_init()
gtk.main_quit() shouldn't work when using gobject Mainloop. gobject mainloop can't live within ur class.
if __name__ == '__main__':
loop = gobject.MainLoop()
loop.run()
Pass in loop into ur class. Then call to quit the app
loop.quit()
dbus (notify) / gtk working example
Not going to write ur vlc app for u. But here is a working example of using dbus / gtk. Just adapt to vlc. Assumed u took my advise on gtk above. As u know any instance of DesktopNotify must be called while using gobject.Mainloop . But u can place it anywhere within ur main class.
desktop_notify.py
from __future__ import print_function
import gobject
import time, dbus
from dbus.exceptions import DBusException
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
class DesktopNotify(object):
""" Notify-OSD ubuntu's implementation has a 20 message limit. U've been warned. When queue is full, delete old message before adding new messages."""
#Static variables
dbus_loop = None
dbus_proxy = None
dbus_interface = None
loop = None
#property
def dbus_name(self):
return ("org.freedesktop.Notifications")
#property
def dbus_path(self):
return ("/org/freedesktop/Notifications")
#property
def dbus_interface(self):
return self.dbus_name
def __init__(self, strInit="initializing passive notification messaging")
strProxyInterface = "<class 'dbus.proxies.Interface'>"
""" Reinitializing dbus when making a 2nd class instance would be bad"""
if str(type(DesktopNotify.dbus_interface)) != strProxyInterface:
DesktopNotify.dbus_loop = DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
bus = dbus.SessionBus(mainloop=DesktopNotify.dbus_loop)
DesktopNotify.dbus_proxy = bus.get_object(self.dbus_name, self.dbus_path)
DesktopNotify.dbus_interface = dbus.Interface(DesktopNotify.dbus_proxy, self.dbus_interface )
DesktopNotify.dbus_proxy.connect_to_signal("NotificationClosed", self.handle_closed)
def handle_closed(self, *arg, **kwargs):
""" Notification closed by user or by code. Print message or not"""
lngNotificationId = int(arg[0])
lngReason = int(arg[1])
def pop(self, lngID):
""" ID stored in database, but i'm going to skip this and keep it simple"""
try:
DesktopNotify.dbus_interface.CloseNotification(lngID)
except DBusException as why:
print(self.__class__.__name__ + ".pop probably no message with id, lngID, why)
finally:
pass
def push(self, strMsgTitle, strMsg, dictField):
""" Create a new passive notification (took out retrying and handling full queues)"""
now = time.localtime( time.time() )
strMsgTime = strMsg + " " + time.asctime(now)
del now
strMsgTime = strMsgTime % dictField
app_name="[your app name]"
app_icon = ''
actions = ''
hint = ''
expire_timeout = 10000 #Use seconds * 1000
summary = strMsgTitle
body = strMsgTime
lngNotificationID = None
try:
lngNotificationID = DesktopNotify.dbus_interfacec.Notify(app_name, 0, app_icon, summary, body, actions, hint, expire_timeout)
except DBusException as why:
#Excellent spot to delete oldest notification and then retry
print(self.__class__.__name__ + ".push Being lazy. Posting passive notification was unsuccessful.", why)
finally:
#Excellent spot to add to database upon success
pass

Related

How do I listen for a DBus signal in a GTK (python 3, Gio) app?

I'm trying to make my GTK app responsive to network connection state changes. My approach is what I said in the question: Listen on a (NetworkManager) DBus signal.
I have a python3 GTK app (a very minimal one, I should add), using python-gi.
As python-dbus (aka "import dbus") is deprecated to the best of my knowledge, I'd like to use Gio via python-gi.
I have an older script that listens for the signal I'm interested in on the system DBus which uses "import dbus" with this code:
dbus.mainloop.glib.DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
bus = dbus.SystemBus()
bus.add_signal_receiver(NMSignalHandler,
dbus_interface=NM_INTERFACE,
signal_name='StateChanged')
(followed by a gobject.MainLoop().run())
I thought this would be relatively straightforward to "port" to Gio, but even after two hours of reading the docs, I don't see how to do that.
Any help would be appreciated.
I already tried using Gio.NetworkMonitor.get_default() and its 'network-changed' signal, but it appears to report with net_available (second parameter) always being true and the default monitor doesn't seem to report a sensible result either.
I would deeply appreciate any help.
To do the equivalent of your python-dbus script with python-gi, the following worked for me:
from gi.repository import GLib, Gio
def network_changed_hndlr(network_monitor, network_available):
print(network_monitor)
print(network_available)
default = Gio.NetworkMonitor.get_default()
default.connect('network-changed', network_changed_hndlr)
mainloop = GLib.MainLoop()
try:
mainloop.run()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
mainloop.quit()
This was using the documentation at:
https://lazka.github.io/pgi-docs/Gio-2.0/structs/NetworkMonitor.html
For the NetworkManager there are a lot more object paths and interfaces.
For example, if I look at the output from this
busctl tree org.freedesktop.NetworkManager there are 48 items I could monitor.
If I wanted to monitor the output of the active connection it would be:
from gi.repository import GLib, Gio
ACTIVE_IFACE = 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Connection.Active'
def active_network_hndlr(dbus_proxy, properties_changed, properties_removed):
props = properties_changed.unpack()
print(props)
def network_proxy(connection):
"""
Provide proxy for comfortable and pythonic method calls
"""
return Gio.DBusProxy.new_for_bus_sync(
bus_type=Gio.BusType.SYSTEM,
flags=Gio.DBusProxyFlags.NONE,
info=None,
name='org.freedesktop.NetworkManager',
object_path=connection,
interface_name=ACTIVE_IFACE,
cancellable=None)
net_mngr = network_proxy('/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/8')
net_mngr.connect('g-properties-changed', active_network_hndlr)
mainloop = GLib.MainLoop()
try:
mainloop.run()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
mainloop.quit()
With the DBusProxy doing most of the heavy lifting. This is documented at:
https://lazka.github.io/pgi-docs/Gio-2.0/classes/DBusProxy.html

Using DBus interface in Hexchat plugin prevents it from exiting

I am trying to write a Hexchat plugin in Python, which would start a server and then communicate with it using DBus and python-dbus library. Everything works fine, until I try to unload the plugin or close Hexchat (which unloads all plugins). The application freezes. It does not happen if I do not call any method using the DBus.
I tried to pinpoint the problem, so I have created a minimal example:
server.py
import dbus.service
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
from gi.repository import GLib
class EchoService(dbus.service.Object):
def __init__(self):
DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
self.loop = GLib.MainLoop()
bus_name = dbus.service.BusName(name='com.skontar.Echo', bus=dbus.SessionBus())
super().__init__(conn=None, object_path='/com/skontar/Echo', bus_name=bus_name)
def run(self):
self.loop.run()
#dbus.service.method(dbus_interface='com.skontar.Echo', in_signature='', out_signature='')
def quit(self):
self.loop.quit()
#dbus.service.method(dbus_interface='com.skontar.Echo', in_signature='s', out_signature='s')
def echo(self, text):
print(text)
return 'ACK'
EchoService().run()
dbus_plugin_unload_test.py
import subprocess
import time
import dbus
import hexchat
__module_name__ = 'dbus_plugin_unload_test'
__module_description__ = 'TBD'
__module_version__ = '1.0'
def get_dbus_interface():
session_bus = dbus.SessionBus()
dbus_object = session_bus.get_object(bus_name='com.skontar.Echo',
object_path='/com/skontar/Echo')
interface = dbus.Interface(object=dbus_object, dbus_interface='com.skontar.Echo')
return interface
def unload(userdata):
hexchat.prnt('Unloading {}, version {}'.format(__module_name__, __module_version__))
global interface
interface.quit()
time.sleep(1)
# raise Exception
hexchat.prnt('Loading {}, version {}'.format(__module_name__, __module_version__))
subprocess.Popen('python3 /home/skontar/Python/Examples/DBus/server.py', shell=True)
time.sleep(1)
interface = get_dbus_interface()
time.sleep(1)
interface.echo('TEST')
hexchat.hook_unload(unload)
In this example, everything works. When I try to unload the plugin or close Hexchat, server exits (so the .quit call works), but Hexchat hangs.
If I comment out both interface.echo('TEST') and interface.quit() it unloads fine, but also the plugin does not do anything useful. I have also found that if I raise Exception at the end of unload callback, everything closes "correctly", nothing hangs.
I am thinking that maybe I am supposed to do some DBus cleanup? Or am I missing some nuance of Hexchat plugin system? If I try the same with regular Python code outside the plugin system, both server and client exit just fine.

How to continuously monitor rhythmbox for track change using python

I want to monitor the change of track in Rhythmbox using python. I want to continuously check for change of track and execute a set of functions if the track is changed. I have written a piece of code which gets hold of the Rhythmbox interfaces from the dbus and gets the current track details. But this program has to be run manually to check for any change.
I am new to this and I would like to know how we can create a background process which continuously runs and checks Rhythmbox.
I dont want to make a Rhythmbox plugin(which rather would make my work simple) as I will be extending the application to listen to multiple music players.
Please suggest me what exactly I would have to do to achieve the functionality.
The Rhythmbox player object (/org/gnome/Rhythmbox/Player) sends a playingUriChanged signal whenever the current song changes. Connect a function to the signal to have it run whenever the signal is received. Here's an example that prints the title of the song whenever a new song starts, using the GLib main loop to process DBus messages:
#! /usr/bin/env python
import dbus
import dbus.mainloop.glib
import glib
# This gets called whenever Rhythmbox sends the playingUriChanged signal
def playing_song_changed (uri):
global shell
if uri != "":
song = shell.getSongProperties (uri)
print "Now playing: {0}".format (song["title"])
else:
print "Not playing anything"
dbus.mainloop.glib.DBusGMainLoop (set_as_default = True)
bus = dbus.SessionBus ()
proxy = bus.get_object ("org.gnome.Rhythmbox", "/org/gnome/Rhythmbox/Player")
player = dbus.Interface (proxy, "org.gnome.Rhythmbox.Player")
player.connect_to_signal ("playingUriChanged", playing_song_changed)
proxy = bus.get_object ("org.gnome.Rhythmbox", "/org/gnome/Rhythmbox/Shell")
shell = dbus.Interface (proxy, "org.gnome.Rhythmbox.Shell")
# Run the GLib event loop to process DBus signals as they arrive
mainloop = glib.MainLoop ()
mainloop.run ()
Take a look at the Conky script here:
https://launchpad.net/~conkyhardcore/+archive/ppa/+files/conkyrhythmbox_2.12.tar.gz
That uses dbus to talk to rhythmbox, like so:
bus = dbus.SessionBus()
remote_object_shell = bus.get_object('org.gnome.Rhythmbox', '/org/gnome/Rhythmbox/Shell')
iface_shell = dbus.Interface(remote_object_shell, 'org.gnome.Rhythmbox.Shell')
remote_object_player = bus.get_object('org.gnome.Rhythmbox', '/org/gnome/Rhythmbox/Player')
iface_player = dbus.Interface(remote_object_player, 'org.gnome.Rhythmbox.Player')
You can call a number of functions on iface_player to get the required information. It looks like you'll have to poll from this example though. If you want to receive a message from dbus on track change you'll have to do that in a different way. This discusses from avenues to explore:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=156706
I am using Ubuntu 14.04.1 and the above script is deprecated for Rhythmbox 3. I am using this script to write the current song to ~/.now_playing for BUTT to read, but you can update it for your needs. Rhythmbox uses MPRIS now and you can get info here:
http://specifications.freedesktop.org/mpris-spec/latest/index.html
#!/usr/bin/python
import dbus
import dbus.mainloop.glib
import glib
# This gets called whenever Rhythmbox sends the playingUriChanged signal
def playing_song_changed (Player,two,three):
global iface
global track
global home
track2 = iface.Get(Player,"Metadata").get(dbus.String(u'xesam:artist'))[0] + " - "+ iface.Get(Player,"Metadata").get(dbus.String(u'xesam:title'))
if track != track2:
track = iface.Get(Player,"Metadata").get(dbus.String(u'xesam:artist'))[0] + " - "+ iface.Get(Player,"Metadata").get(dbus.String(u'xesam:title'))
f = open( home + '/.now_playing', 'w' )
f.write( track + '\n' )
f.close()
dbus.mainloop.glib.DBusGMainLoop (set_as_default = True)
bus = dbus.SessionBus ()
from os.path import expanduser
home = expanduser("~")
player = bus.get_object ("org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.rhythmbox", "/org/mpris/MediaPlayer2")
iface = dbus.Interface (player, "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties")
track = iface.Get("org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player","Metadata").get(dbus.String(u'xesam:artist'))[0] + " - "+ iface.Get("org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player","Metadata").get(dbus.Strin$
f = open( home + "/.now_playing", 'w' )
f.write( track + '\n' )
f.close()
iface.connect_to_signal ("PropertiesChanged", playing_song_changed)
# Run the GLib event loop to process DBus signals as they arrive
mainloop = glib.MainLoop ()
mainloop.run ()
Something like:
from time import sleep
execute = True
while execute:
your_function_call()
sleep(30) # in seconds; prevent busy polling
Should work just fine. If that was hooked up to something that listened to signals (import signal) so that you could set execute to False when someone ctrl-c's the application, that'd be basically what you're after.
Otherwise, have a Google for daemonisation (which involves forking the process a couple of times); from memory, there's even a decent Python library now (which, from memory, requires 2.5/2.6 with statements) which would help make that side of things easier :).

How do I get all instances of VLC on dbus quickly?

basically the problem is, that the only way to get all instances of VLC is to search all non-named instances for the org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer identity function and call it.
(alternatively I could use the introspection API, but this wouldn't seem to solve my problem)
Unfortunately many programs upon having sent a dbus call, simply do not respond, causing a long and costly timeout.
When this happens multiple times it can add up.
Basically the builtin timeout is excessively long.
If I can decrease the dbus timeout somehow that will solve my problem, but the ideal solution would be a way.
I got the idea that I could put each call to "Identify" inside a thread and that I could kill threads that take too long, but this seems not to be suggested. Also adding multithreading greatly increases the CPU load while not increasing the speed of the program all that much.
here is the code that I am trying to get to run quickly (more or less) which is currently painfully slow.
import dbus
bus = dbus.SessionBus()
dbus_proxy = bus.get_object('org.freedesktop.DBus', '/org/freedesktop/DBus')
names = dbus_proxy.ListNames()
for name in names:
if name.startswith(':'):
try:
proxy = bus.get_object(name, '/')
ident_method = proxy.get_dbus_method("Identity",
dbus_interface="org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer")
print ident_method()
except dbus.exceptions.DBusException:
pass
Easier than spawning a bunch of threads would be to make the calls to the different services asynchronously, providing a callback handler for when a result comes back or a D-Bus error occurs. All of the calls effectively happen in parallel, and your program can proceed as soon as it gets some positive results.
Here's a quick-and-dirty program that prints a list of all the services it finds. Note how quickly it gets all the positive results without having to wait for any timeouts from anything. In a real program you'd probably assign a do-nothing function to the error handler, since your goal here is to ignore the services that don't respond, but this example waits until it's heard from everything before quitting.
#! /usr/bin/env python
import dbus
import dbus.mainloop.glib
import functools
import glib
class VlcFinder (object):
def __init__ (self, mainloop):
self.outstanding = 0
self.mainloop = mainloop
bus = dbus.SessionBus ()
dbus_proxy = bus.get_object ("org.freedesktop.DBus", "/org/freedesktop/DBus")
names = dbus_proxy.ListNames ()
for name in dbus_proxy.ListNames ():
if name.startswith (":"):
proxy = bus.get_object (name, "/")
iface = dbus.Interface (proxy, "org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer")
iface.Identity (reply_handler = functools.partial (self.reply_cb, name),
error_handler = functools.partial (self.error_cb, name))
self.outstanding += 1
def reply_cb (self, name, ver):
print "Found {0}: {1}".format (name, ver)
self.received_result ()
def error_cb (self, name, msg):
self.received_result ()
def received_result (self):
self.outstanding -= 1
if self.outstanding == 0:
self.mainloop.quit ()
if __name__ == "__main__":
dbus.mainloop.glib.DBusGMainLoop (set_as_default = True)
mainloop = glib.MainLoop ()
finder = VlcFinder (mainloop)
mainloop.run ()

How refresh a DrawingArea in PyGTK?

I have an interface created with Glade. It contains a DrawingArea and buttons.
I tried to create a Thread to refresh every X time my Canva. After a few seconds, I get error messages like:
"X Window Server 0.0", "Fatal Error IO 11"
Here is my code :
import pygtk
pygtk.require("2.0")
import gtk
import Canvas
import threading as T
import time
import Map
gtk.gdk.threads_init()
class Interface(object):
class ThreadCanvas(T.Thread):
"""Thread to display the map"""
def __init__(self, interface):
T.Thread.__init__(self)
self.interface = interface
self.started = True
self.start()
def run(self):
while self.started:
time.sleep(2)
self.interface.on_canvas_expose_event()
def stop(self):
self.started = False
def __init__(self):
self.interface = gtk.Builder()
self.interface.add_from_file("interface.glade")
#Map
self.map = Map.Map(2,2)
#Canva
self.canvas = Canvas.MyCanvas(self.interface.get_object("canvas"),self.game)
self.interface.connect_signals(self)
#Thread Canvas
self.render = self.ThreadCanvas(self)
def on_btnChange_clicked(self, widget):
#Change map
self.map.change()
def on_interface_destroy(self, widget):
self.render.stop()
self.render.join()
self.render._Thread__stop()
gtk.main_quit()
def on_canvas_expose_event(self):
st = time.time()
self.canvas.update(self.map)
et = time.time()
print "Canvas refresh in : %f times" %(et-st)
def main(self):
gtk.main()
How can i fix these errors ?
To use Python threads in PyGTK, you need to surround any access to shared GTK objects with gtk.gdk.threads_enter() and gtk.gdk.threads_leave(). See also the threads_enter() method.
You might even be better off using GTKs functions for periodic function calls, such as timeout_add(...) and timeout_add_seconds(...) (note that recently these functions moved around a bit, and in your installation they might be in GObject and not GLib).
Some other notes:
Subclassing Thread objects is the Java way of doing things, not the Python way. The Python way is to define a function or callable object that what you need and pass it to a Thread constructor.
You should not be using _Thread__stop(). It is name mangled for a reason, which is that it forms part of the internal mechanism of the Thread object and is not for normal public use. Instead, you should use one of the thread-safe objects (eg. a Condition object) and check it from the function you passed to your Thread object in step one. Alternatively, set your Thread as a daemon, so it will automatically die when the program exits.
The usual extension for GTKBuilder files is ".ui", not ".glade" (even though Glade itself appends ".glade" as the default extension.)
I hope this helps.

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