Writing Applets

[roobarb!]

I'm trying to develop a few small applets for SqueezePlay, but I'm having a hell of a time having never programmed in Lua before, and the apparent lack of working example material.

Currently I'm trying to show a 'connecting' screen and set the icon of the menu entry to an icon file within WQVGAsmallSkin. However, the code for the SkinTest applet is rather unfriendly for a Lua newbie and the code in the old TestApplet (which is far easier to comprehend) is broken. I've followed the examples in the 'SqueezePlay Applet Developing Guide' on the wiki, but that only gets you so far.

So, could anyone point me towards some better example materials, or let me know how to display a connecting screen and set the icon for a menu entry properly?

Thanks!

[erland]

I've always felt that the best samples is the real SqueezePlay source code, so what I do is often find some section in the standard SqueezePlay user interface that does what I like and then try to find the source code that accomplish it.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you like to do, but if you want a popup dialog while the applet tries to connect to something, it would be something like:

        -- Stupid timer that triggers in a while since I don't want to show real connection code as it's too complex
        self.timer = Timer(2000,
             function()
                 self.popup:hide()
             end,
             true)
        self.timer:start()

        -- create animiation to show while we get data from the servers
        self.popup = Popup("waiting_popup")
        self.popup:addWidget(Icon("icon_connecting"))
        self.popup:addWidget(Label("text", self:string("APPLET_FETCHING")))
        self:tieAndShowWindow(self.popup)

The this would open up a popup with a rotating connecting icon and the text from the strings.txt entry for APPLET_FETCHING and hide it after 2 seconds when the timer triggers. In your scenario you would probably not have a timer, you would probably have some asynchronous network connection code.

The above code section is from the Settings/Advanced/Applet Installer menu which can be found in the SetupAppletInstallerApplet.lua file.

Was it something like this you were looking for ?

[roobarb!]

I've always felt that the best samples is the real SqueezePlay source code, so what I do is often find some section in the standard SqueezePlay user interface that does what I like and then try to find the source code that accomplish it.

Yes, pretty much anything I've ever done with SqueezePlay is the result of pulling apart other peoples' code!

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you like to do, but if you want a popup dialog while the applet tries to connect to something...

<snipped>

The above code section is from the Settings/Advanced/Applet Installer menu which can be found in the SetupAppletInstallerApplet.lua file.

Was it something like this you were looking for ?

That is perfect, thank you! Thanks for the reference too, I'll have a dig around in there for more clues. Actually, one thing that has eluded me so far is how to get SqueezePlay to display system information about the device it is running on. I can see the kind of details I'm after in Settings > Advanced > Squeezebox Information > Player Information, but I can't find the applet that controls this, so I've yet to find out where it gets the IP / MAC details from.

One of the applets I've written needs to execute a shell script - this works fine using os.execute, but it would be nice if there was a way to keep that fullscreen popup on screen only until it has finished it's work. It would be even nicer if there was a neat way to hand the output of said script back into SqueezePlay to display.

Would you (or anyone else here) happen to know the best way to go about it?

[erland]

Actually, one thing that has eluded me so far is how to get SqueezePlay to display system information about the device it is running on. I can see the kind of details I'm after in Settings > Advanced > Squeezebox Information > Player Information, but I can't find the applet that controls this, so I've yet to find out where it gets the IP / MAC details from.

I think that menu comes from the server (from Slim/Control/Jive.pm) on the server side.

But if you just want the MAC address, you can get that through:
System:getMacAddress()
Generally the Diagnostics/DiagnosticsApplet.lua is a good source if you like to see how to read system information, in the user interface you reach it through Settings/Advanced/Diagnostics.

One of the applets I've written needs to execute a shell script - this works fine using os.execute, but it would be nice if there was a way to keep that fullscreen popup on screen only until it has finished it's work. It would be even nicer if there was a neat way to hand the output of said script back into SqueezePlay to display.

Would you (or anyone else here) happen to know the best way to go about it?

In my Patch Installer applet I've used os.execute and sometimes sent its output to a file using >, not sure if there are better ways to do it. Generally os.execute() is not recommended as I believe it will start a new shell and this use unnecessary amount of memory. However, sometimes there isn't an easy way to do it in lua and then you don't have much choices.

If it's a script that run in background it would probably be possible to use a Timer to check if the script has finished once a second and call the hide() method on the dialog when it has finished.

[cparker]

Are there any good examples of interfacing with buttons under Jive?

I'm trying to find a way of sticking a button on the now playing screen and then on press it runs some of my plugin code.

You can build the menus from a plugin so must be possible to dynamically build buttons?

Cheers

[erland]

Are there any good examples of interfacing with buttons under Jive?

I'm trying to find a way of sticking a button on the now playing screen and then on press it runs some of my plugin code.

You can build the menus from a plugin so must be possible to dynamically build buttons?

Cheers

That would be this enhancement request:
http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15067

Without that you either have to patch the Now Playing applet or possible write some code to access its internal variables. I don't think any of these solutions are a good idea.

A better solution would be to integrate with the Slim::Menu::TrackInfo on the server side to create your own entry in the context menu that's opened when you hold the track title a while on a Touch or push the +/More button on a Radio/Controller.

To integrate with Slim::Menu::TrackInfo you need to have some registration code in initPlugin like:

Slim::Menu::TrackInfo->registerInfoProvider( sugarcube => (
    before    => 'artwork',
    func     => \&trackInfoHandler,
) );

And then implement the trackInfoHandler function. You can either look in the TrackStat source (which adds a "Rating" menu) or search in the Squeezebox Server source for other functions that uses TrackInfo to add items in the context menus.

[cparker]

Cheers Erland, I already use trackinfo menus but wanted a single on screen click option. Oh well, I've voted for the feature request maybe one day it will happen

Thanks for your help