XBMC PHP API

Status : draft

This project is still under development, changing every day, needing a lot of documentation, etc, etc. So please, be my guest and get in touch with me.

Note about autoloads

You can use the autoload.php file so that classes will be included dynamically. If you use Symfony2, just add XBMC as a namespace prefix in app/autoload.php and make it linked to the folder where you've cloned this API (in the following case the API is part of a bundle).

<?php
$loader->registerNamespaces(array(
    'Symfony'          => array(__DIR__.'/../vendor/symfony/src', __DIR__.'/../vendor/bundles'),
    'Sensio'           => __DIR__.'/../vendor/bundles',
    'JMS'              => __DIR__.'/../vendor/bundles',
    'Doctrine\\Common' => __DIR__.'/../vendor/doctrine-common/lib',
    'Doctrine\\DBAL'   => __DIR__.'/../vendor/doctrine-dbal/lib',
    'Doctrine'         => __DIR__.'/../vendor/doctrine/lib',
    'Monolog'          => __DIR__.'/../vendor/monolog/src',
    'Assetic'          => __DIR__.'/../vendor/assetic/src',
    'Metadata'         => __DIR__.'/../vendor/metadata/src',
    'XBMC'         => __DIR__.'/../src/MMC/XBMCBundle/API',
));

Usage

This XBMC API provides a wrapper which is just a simple class container for the API namespaces and methods. __ BUT __ it helps in getting a great auto- completion feature (at least working on NetBeans 7.0.1, I need to test it on other IDEs).

First create a new XBMCServer instance :

<?php
use \XBMC\XBMC as XBMC;
use \XBMC\Server as XBMCServer;

$xbmcServer = new XBMCServer( '192.168.0.61' );
$xbmc = new XBMC( $xbmcServer );

Then, just call the API using the namespace and method convention defined at JSON-RPC API v3

<?php
$xbmc->Wrapper
        ->AudioLibrary
        ->GetAlbums
        ->call();

AudioLibray is the namespace defined within the official XBMC API

GetAlbums is one of the method provided by the AudioLibray namespace

call() finishes the job (request building and call to your XBMC server)

call() can take an associative array of parameters which will be transformed into JSON before being sent with your query

Example to get the 10st albums of your audio library :

<?php
$xbmc->Wrapper
        ->AudioLibrary
        ->GetAlbums
        ->call( array( 'limits' => array( 'start'  => 0,
                                          'end'    => 10 ))) );

see sample.php

XBMC Request and Response

Each request to your XBMC server is accessible by $xbmc->getJSONRequest() once it has been called.

<?php
$xbmc->Wrapper
        ->AudioLibrary
        ->GetAlbums
        ->call( array( 'limits' => array( 'start'  => 0,
                                          'end'    => 10 )));

var_dump( $xbmc->getJSONRequest() );

returns

object(stdClass)#6 (4) {
  ["jsonrpc"]=>
  string(3) "2.0"
  ["id"]=>
  int(7565294)
  ["method"]=>
  string(22) "AudioLibrary.GetAlbums"
  ["params"]=>
  object(stdClass)#7 (1) {
    ["limits"]=>
    object(stdClass)#8 (2) {
      ["start"]=>
      int(0)
      ["end"]=>
      int(10)
    }
  }
}

Same for the response with $xbmc->getJSONResponse()

XBMC class features

$xbmc->isAlive() returns true if you server is up
to be continued

Extending API Method

You can extend API methods, see Libraries/JSONRPC/Introspect.php for an example.

<?php
namespace XBMC\Libraries\JSONRPC;

use \XBMC\Libraries\APIMethod as APIMethod;
use \XBMC\Server as XBMCServer;

/**
 * A simple definition for JSONRPC.Introspect
 * You can add custom methods in this class (see Introspect.getAPIMethodsList()
 * for an example)
 *
 * Note: this class was auto-generated using JSONRPC.Introspect results
 * @see \XBMC\Libraries\Generator
 *
 */
class Introspect extends APIMethod
{
    public function getAPIMethodsList()
    {
        $introspectArray = $this->call( array(), XBMCServer::RETURN_TYPE_ARRAY );
        return array_keys( $introspectArray['result']['methods'] );
    }
}