Audio player toy using Gstreamer

In order to learn more about some other Open Source projects and different development environments, I started to read about Gstreamer.

The idea was implement a very simple player, where the medias that will be played are passed by argument in the command line.

The main pipeline has only one element, the playbin2, witch has the autonomy to autodetect the file extension and, for example, choose the most appropriate outputstream. Because of this, the player has the "capacity" of playing both audio and video files.

Was very interesting playing with an area of computer science that I never had any kind of experience before.

Here is the code:

#include 
#include 


GstTagList *tags;


static void
print_tags()
{
  gchar *artist = "Artist";
  gchar *title = "Music";

  /* If already known, get the Artist and Title tags of the media  */
  gst_tag_list_get_string(tags, GST_TAG_ARTIST, &artist);
  gst_tag_list_get_string(tags, GST_TAG_TITLE, &title);
  g_print("%s - %s :", artist, title);
}

static gboolean
cb_print_position (GstElement *pipeline)
{
  GstFormat fmt = GST_FORMAT_TIME;
  gint64 pos, len;

  /* Keep printing informations about the media that is playing */

  print_tags();

  if (gst_element_query_position (pipeline, &fmt, &pos)
    && gst_element_query_duration (pipeline, &fmt, &len)) {
      g_print (" %" GST_TIME_FORMAT " / %" GST_TIME_FORMAT "\r",
               GST_TIME_ARGS (pos), GST_TIME_ARGS (len));
  }

  /* call me again */
  return TRUE;
}

static gboolean
bus_call (GstBus     *bus,
          GstMessage *msg,
          gpointer    data)
{
  GMainLoop *loop = (GMainLoop *) data;

  switch (GST_MESSAGE_TYPE (msg)) {

    case GST_MESSAGE_EOS:
      g_print ("\nEnd of stream\n");
      g_main_loop_quit (loop);
      break;

    case GST_MESSAGE_ERROR: {
      gchar  *debug;
      GError *error;

      gst_message_parse_error (msg, &error, &debug);
      g_free (debug);

      g_printerr ("Bus error: %s\n", error->message);
      g_error_free (error);

      g_main_loop_quit (loop);
      break;
    }

    case GST_MESSAGE_TAG: {
      GstTagList *newTags = gst_tag_list_new();
      gst_message_parse_tag(msg, &newTags);
      tags = gst_tag_list_merge(tags, newTags, GST_TAG_MERGE_PREPEND);

      gst_tag_list_free(newTags);

      break;
    }

    default:
      break;
  }

  /* call me again */
  return TRUE;
}

static void
add_bus_watch(GstElement *pipeline,
              GMainLoop *loop)
{
  GstBus *bus;
  bus = gst_pipeline_get_bus (GST_PIPELINE (pipeline));
  gst_bus_add_watch (bus, bus_call, loop);
  gst_object_unref (bus);
}

static GstElement *
init_pipeline(GMainLoop *loop)
{
  GstElement *playbin;

  /* Create gstreamer elements */
  playbin  = gst_element_factory_make ("playbin2", "play");

  if (!playbin) {
    g_printerr ("One element could not be created. Exiting.\n");
    return NULL;
  }

  add_bus_watch(playbin, loop);

  return playbin;
}

gboolean
set_uri(GstElement *playbin,
        const char *uri)
{
  /* Set the input filename to the source element */
  GError *error = NULL;
  g_object_set (G_OBJECT (playbin), "uri",
      gst_filename_to_uri(uri, &error), NULL);

  if (error) {
      g_print("Filename to URI error: %s\n", error->message);
      g_error_free(error);

      return FALSE;
  }

  return TRUE;
}

gint
main (int   argc,
      char *argv[])
{
  GMainLoop *loop;
  GstElement *pipeline;
  gint i;

  /* Initialisation */
  gst_init (&argc, &argv);

  if (argc < 2)
    g_error ("Usage: %s   ...", argv[0]);

  loop = g_main_loop_new (NULL, FALSE);
  pipeline = init_pipeline(loop);

  if (!pipeline)
    return -1;

  g_timeout_add (200, (GSourceFunc) cb_print_position, pipeline);

  for (i = 1; i < argc; i++) {
    if (!set_uri(pipeline, argv[i])) {
        continue;
    }

    tags = gst_tag_list_new();

    /* Start playing */
    g_print ("Running...\n");
    gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_PLAYING);
    g_main_loop_run (loop);

    /* Out of the main loop, clean up nicely */
    g_print ("Returned, stopping playback\n");
    gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_NULL);
    gst_tag_list_free(tags);

    /* Has the execution ended? */
    g_print("\n");
    if (i < argc - 1) {
        g_print("Next track...\n\n");
    } else {
        g_print ("Deleting pipeline\n");
        gst_object_unref (GST_OBJECT (pipeline));
        g_print("End of execution!\n");
    }
  }

  return 0;
}