Poorly Instance Indentification

[imsamuka]

I set the following into ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:

input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket

This is equivalent to starting mpv with the --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket cmd argument, but the server script doesn't indentify as such, and start a new instance.

If this is solved, i think it's possible to set up the server as a script to start along with mpv in a very transparent way.

[mcastorina]

The current behavior of the server is to run mpv if it's found not to be running:

mpv-remote-app/server/mpv_remote_app/__init__.py

Lines 102 to 104 in 7e777fd

	logging.info("No running mpv instance found. Starting mpv...")
	subprocess.Popen(["mpv", "--no-terminal",
	"--input-ipc-server="+args.mpv_socket, "--idle"])

It's pretty dumb when it looks for running mpv also - it loops through all running processes searching for mpv and --input-ipc-server. There's certainly room for improvement :)

That being said, are you starting mpv yourself or is the server spawning it in your example?

If this is solved, i think it's possible to set up the server as a script to start along with mpv in a very transparent way.

What would that look like?

[imsamuka]

it loops through all running processes searching for mpv and --input-ipc-server

This is certainly a very naive implementation. In the man page there's a example of how you can test the connection that can work

That being said, are you starting mpv yourself or is the server spawning it in your example?

I'm opening mpv by myself, mostly through file managers.

What would that look like?

Well, we could run a lua script that spawns mpv-remote-app using the password from a environment variable, a hard coded one, or a configurable one in mpv.conf (maybe?).

[imsamuka]

Actually, using lua or javascript, i guess it's possible to bypass the IPC socket layer completely, and run a http server directly with perfect windows compatibility. I'll try to do it, seems pretty fun.

[imsamuka]

I tried it with lua. The server layer is easy enough if you have LuaSockets installed.

local json = dofile("json.lua.disable") -- only works if running mpv from ~/.config/mpv/scripts
local socket = require "socket"
local udp = assert(socket.udp())
localport = 28899
udp:setsockname("*", port)
udp:settimeout(2, "t") -- await client for 2s

function process_client()
    local raw_data, msg_or_ip, port_or_nil = udp:receivefrom(1024)
    if raw_data then
        mp.msg.info("udp:receivefrom: " .. raw_data .. msg_or_ip, port_or_nil)

        if raw_data == "health" then
            mp.msg.info(msg_or_ip .. " asked for health")
            return
        end

        local data = json.parse(raw_data)

        if data ~= nil and data ~= json.null then
            -- local hmac = data["hmac"]
            local message = json.parse(data["message"])
            if message ~= nil and message ~= json.null then
                mp.msg.info("message: " .. dump(message))
            end
        end

        -- udp:sendto(data, msg_or_ip, port_or_nil) -- echo it
    elseif msg_or_ip ~= 'timeout' then
        error("Unknown network error: " .. tostring(msg_or_ip))
    end
end

function dump(o)
    if type(o) == 'table' then
        local s = '{ '
        for k, v in pairs(o) do
            if type(k) ~= 'number' then k = '"' .. k .. '"' end
            s = s .. '[' .. k .. '] = ' .. dump(v) .. ','
        end
        return s .. '} '
    else
        return tostring(o)
    end
end


-- Initialize
mp.msg.info("Mpv UDP Server open on port " .. port)
mp.add_periodic_timer(0, coroutine.wrap(function()
    while 1 do
        coroutine.yield(process_client())
    end
end))

It was fun but I'm going to stop it for now, you may use it or not; it's probably easier to do it in javascript, i just don't know if you can bind a udp port through it. Or you could do a plugin with libmpv. Lua misses a lot of easy utils like the json, hmac, md5, which we need to supply ourselves too.

It's my first time trying lua, so i didn't figured it all; i don't know how to load the json parser the best way. The protocol you're using to communicate between the app and the server is not really documented, so it would take quite some time to understand all of its intricacies.