VlcProxy

VLC exposes an optional http server for remote commands to be called against the running instance of VLC. This can be configured to listen on localhost only and uses HTTP basic auth for authentication.

The purpose of this gem is to allow programmatic access using ruby against this http server. Possible use cases are scripts to automate VLC, expose automation services to your VLC instance, gather information on your running VLC instance, control VLC programmatically etc.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'vlc_proxy'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install vlc_proxy

At the top of your application or script load the library:

require 'vlc_proxy

First create the connection object by giving it both the hostname that VLC is running on along with the password set for basic auth. The default port is 8080 and the default scheme is http.

# Create the connection

connection = VlcProxy::Connection.new(hostname, password)

# Create the client
client = VlcProxy::Client.new(connection)

puts client.current_state.inspect

If you configure the HTTP server not to use the default port and scheme, you can pass this into the connection object as optional inputs to override the defaults.

# Create the connection

port = 8090
connection = VlcProxy::Connection.new(hostname, password, port)

# Create the client
client = VlcProxy::Client.new(connection)

if client.connection.connected?
  puts 'Hello VLC'
else
  puts 'Failed to connect to VLC'
end

After creating the client, there are multiple methods exposed to interact with the VLC instance. The basic example is to call current state, but we can also make VLC take actions directly available through the UI.

• current_state
• pause_playlist
• start_playlist
• stop_playlist
• next_item
• previous_item
• toggle_repeat
• toggle_loop
• toggle_random
• toggle_fullscren
• increase_volume(amount)
• decrease_volume(amount)
• volume(amount_with_units)
• skip_forward(amount_in_seconds)
• skip_backward(amount_in_seconds)

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/zsyed91/vlc_proxy. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Everyone interacting in the VlcProxy project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.