XMMS2 PERL API

From Bob's Basement

[edit] Introduction

There seems to be very little documentation regarding the PERL API for XMMS2, so I thought I'd cobble some together!

Before we start we need to do the usual perl customaries

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Audio::XMMSClient;

Before we can start issuing commands to XMMS2d we need to connect to it!

#So we open a connection
my $xmms = Audio::XMMSClient->new('tutorial');

#Next we test if the connection failed.  If it did, we exit, if it didn't, we carry on.
if (!$xmms->connect) {
  printf STDERR "Connection failed: %s\n", $xmms->get_last_error;
  exit 1;
}

We are now connected to the XMMS2d so we can start controlling XMMS2. Let's start by getting the numeric ID of the currently playing track.

#First, we get the result
my $result = $xmms->playback_current_id;

#Next, we wait for it to complete
$result->wait;

#Now we should have the result but we make sure that it didn't fail and exit if it did fail.
if ($result->iserror) {
  print "playback current id returned error, ", $result->get_error, "\n";
  exit 2;
}

#So now we have a playback ID, let's print it out and have a look!
print "$id\n";

Not terribly exciting, let's use it to get some more info on the current track

if ($id == 0) {
  print "Nothing is playing";
} else {
  #Let's get the playback info for this ID
  $result = $xmms->medialib_get_info($id);
  #Wait for it to complete
  $result->wait;
  #And make sure that it didn't fail
  if ($result->iserror) {
    print "medialib get info returns error, ",  $result->get_error, "\n";
    exit 3;
  }
  #Let's get the info that was returned
  my $minfo = $result->value;
  my $artist = $minfo->{artist} || 'Unknown Artist';
  my $title = $minfo->{title} || 'Unknown Title';
  #And print it out
  print "Currently play: $title by $artist";
}