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streamlink/docs/api_guide.rst
2016-09-19 17:38:33 -04:00

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.. _api_guide:
API Guide
=========
.. module:: streamlink
This API is what powers the :ref:`cli` but is also available to developers that wish
to make use of the data Streamlink can retrieve in their own application.
Extracting streams
------------------
The simplest use of the Streamlink API looks like this:
.. code-block:: python
>>> import streamlink
>>> streams = streamlink.streams("http://twitch.tv/day9tv")
This simply attempts to find a plugin and use it to extract streams from
the URL. This works great in simple cases but if you want more
fine tuning you need to use a `session object`_ instead.
The returned value is a dict containing :class:`Stream <stream.Stream>` objects:
.. code-block:: python
>>> streams
{'best': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>,
'high': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>,
'low': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>,
'medium': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>,
'mobile': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>,
'source': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>,
'worst': <HLSStream('http://video11.fra01.hls.twitch.tv/ ...')>}
If no plugin for the URL is found, a :exc:`NoPluginError` will be raised.
If an error occurs while fetching streams, a :exc:`PluginError` will be raised.
Opening streams to read data
----------------------------
Now that you have extracted some streams we might want to read some data from
one of them. When you call `open()` on a stream, a file-like object will be
returned, which you can call `.read(size)` and `.close()` on.
.. code-block:: python
>>> stream = streams["source"]
>>> fd = stream.open()
>>> data = fd.read(1024)
>>> fd.close()
If an error occurs while opening a stream, a :exc:`StreamError` will be raised.
Inspecting streams
------------------
It's also possible to inspect streams internal parameters, see
:ref:`api-stream-subclasses` to see what attributes are available
for inspection for each stream type.
For example this is a :class:`HLSStream <stream.HLSStream>` object which
contains a `url` attribute.
.. code-block:: python
>>> stream.url
'http://video38.ams01.hls.twitch.tv/hls11/ ...'
Session object
--------------
The session allows you to set various options and is more efficient
when extracting streams more than once. You start by creating a
:class:`Streamlink` object:
.. code-block:: python
>>> from streamlink import Streamlink
>>> session = Streamlink()
You can then extract streams like this:
.. code-block:: python
>>> streams = session.streams("http://twitch.tv/day9tv")
or set options like this:
.. code-block:: python
>>> session.set_option("rtmp-rtmpdump", "/path/to/rtmpdump")
See :func:`Streamlink.set_option` to see which options are available.
Examples
--------
Simple player
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This example uses the `PyGObject`_ module to playback a stream using the
`GStreamer`_ framework.
.. _PyGObject: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Projects/PyGObject
.. _GStreamer: http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/
.. literalinclude:: ../examples/gst-player.py