gstreamer/docs/manual/basics-helloworld.xml

<chapter id="chapter-helloworld">
  <title>Your first application</title>
  <para>
    This chapter will summarize everything you've learned in the previous
    chapters. It describes all aspects of a simple &GStreamer; application,
    including initializing libraries, creating elements, packing elements
    together in a pipeline and playing this pipeline. By doing all this,
    you will be able to build a simple Ogg/Vorbis audio player.
  </para>

  <sect1 id="section-helloworld">
    <title>Hello world</title>
    <para>
      We're going to create a simple first application, a simple Ogg/Vorbis
      command-line audio player. For this, we will use only standard
      &GStreamer; components. The player will read a file specified on
      the command-line. Let's get started!
    </para>
    <para>
      We've learned, in <xref linkend="chapter-init"/>, that the first thing
      to do in your application is to initialize &GStreamer; by calling
      <function>gst_init ()</function>. Also, make sure that the application
      includes <filename>gst/gst.h</filename> so all function names and
      objects are properly defined. Use <function>#include
      &lt;gst/gst.h&gt;</function> to do that.
    </para>
    <para>
      Next, you'll want to create the different elements using
      <function>gst_element_factory_make ()</function>. For an Ogg/Vorbis
      audio player, we'll need a source element that reads files from a
      disk. &GStreamer; includes this element under the name
      <quote>filesrc</quote>. Next, we'll need something to parse the
      file and decoder it into raw audio. &GStreamer; has two elements
      for this: the first parses Ogg streams into elementary streams (video,
      audio) and is called <quote>oggdemux</quote>. The second is a Vorbis
      audio decoder, it's conveniently called <quote>vorbisdec</quote>.
      Since <quote>oggdemux</quote> creates dynamic pads for each elementary
      stream, you'll need to set a <quote>new-pad</quote> event handler
      on the <quote>oggdemux</quote> element, like you've learned in
      <xref linkend="section-pads-dynamic"/>, to link the Ogg parser and
      the Vorbis decoder elements together. At last, we'll also need an
      audio output element, we will use <quote>alsasink</quote>, which
      outputs sound to an ALSA audio device.
    </para>
    <para>
      The last thing left to do is to add all elements into a container
      element, a <classname>GstPipeline</classname>, and iterate this
      pipeline until we've played the whole song. We've previously
      learned how to add elements to a container bin in <xref
      linkend="chapter-bins"/>, and we've learned about element states
      in <xref linkend="section-elements-states"/>. We will use the function
      <function>gst_bin_sync_children_state ()</function> to synchronize
      the state of a bin on all of its contained children.
    </para>
    <para>
      Let's now add all the code together to get our very first audio
      player:
    </para>
    <programlisting>
<!-- example-begin helloworld.c -->
#include &lt;gst/gst.h&gt;

/*
 * Global objects are usually a bad thing. For the purpose of this
 * example, we will use them, however.
 */

GstElement *pipeline, *source, *parser, *decoder, *sink;

static void
new_pad (GstElement *element,
	 GstPad     *pad,
	 gpointer    data)
{
  /* We can now link this pad with the audio decoder and
   * add both decoder and audio output to the pipeline. */
  gst_pad_link (pad, gst_element_get_pad (decoder, "sink"));
  gst_bin_add_many (GST_BIN (pipeline), decoder, sink, NULL);

  /* This function synchronizes a bins state on all of its
   * contained children. */
  gst_bin_sync_children_state (GST_BIN (pipeline));
}

int
main (int   argc,
      char *argv[])
{
  /* initialize GStreamer */
  gst_init (&amp;argc, &amp;argv);

  /* check input arguments */
  if (argc != 2) {
    g_print ("Usage: %s &lt;Ogg/Vorbis filename&gt;\n", argv[0]);
    return -1;
  }

  /* create elements */
  pipeline = gst_pipeline_new ("audio-player");
  source = gst_element_factory_make ("filesrc", "file-source");
  parser = gst_element_factory_make ("oggdemux", "ogg-parser");
  decoder = gst_element_factory_make ("vorbisdec", "vorbis-decoder");
  sink = gst_element_factory_make ("alsasink", "alsa-output");

  /* set filename property on the file source */
  g_object_set (G_OBJECT (source), "location", argv[1], NULL);

  /* link together - note that we cannot link the parser and
   * decoder yet, becuse the parser uses dynamic pads. For that,
   * we set a new-pad signal handler. */
  gst_element_link (source, parser);
  gst_element_link (decoder, sink);
  g_signal_connect (parser, "new-pad", G_CALLBACK (new_pad), NULL);

  /* put all elements in a bin - or at least the ones we will use
   * instantly. */
  gst_bin_add_many (GST_BIN (pipeline), source, parser, NULL);

  /* Now set to playing and iterate. We will set the decoder and
   * audio output to ready so they initialize their memory already.
   * This will decrease the amount of time spent on linking these
   * elements when the Ogg parser emits the new-pad signal. */
  gst_element_set_state (decoder, GST_STATE_READY);
  gst_element_set_state (sink, GST_STATE_READY);
  gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_PLAYING);

  /* and now iterate - the rest will be automatic from here on.
   * When the file is finished, gst_bin_iterate () will return
   * FALSE, thereby terminating this loop. */
  while (gst_bin_iterate (GST_BIN (pipeline))) ;

  /* clean up nicely */
  gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_NULL);
  gst_object_unref (GST_OBJECT (pipeline));

  return 0;
}
<!-- example-end helloworld.c -->
    </programlisting>
    <!-- FIXME: this image needs updating -->
    <para>
      We now have created a complete pipeline.  We can visualise the
      pipeline as follows:
    </para>
    <figure float="1" id="section-hello-img">
      <title>The "hello world" pipeline</title>
      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata fileref="images/hello-world.&image;" format="&IMAGE;" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>  
    </figure>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="section-helloworld-compilerun">
    <title>Compiling and Running helloworld.c</title>
    <para>
      To compile the helloworld example, use: <command>gcc -Wall
      $(pkg-config --cflags --libs gstreamer-&GST_MAJORMINOR;)
      helloworld.c -o helloworld</command>. &GStreamer; makes use of
      <command>pkg-config</command> to get compiler and linker flags
      needed to compile this application. If you're running a
      non-standard installation, make sure the
      <classname>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</classname> environment variable is
      set to the correct location (<filename>$libdir/pkgconfig</filename>).
      application against the uninstalled location.
    </para>
    <para>
      You can run this example application with <command>./helloworld
      file.ogg</command>. Substitute <filename>file.ogg</filename>
      with your favourite Ogg/Vorbis file.
    </para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="section-hello-world-conclusion">
    <title>Conclusion</title>
    <para>
      This concludes our first example. As you see, setting up a pipeline
      is very low-level but powerful. You will see later in this manual how
      you can create a more powerful media player with even less effort
      using higher-level interfaces. We will discuss all that in <xref
      linkend="part-highlevel"/>. We will first, however, go more in-depth
      into more advanced &GStreamer; internals.
    </para>
    <para>
      It should be clear from the example that we can very easily replace
      the <quote>filesrc</quote> element with some other element that
      reads data from a network, or some other data source element that
      is better integrated with your desktop environment. Also, you can
      use other decoders and parsers to support other media types. You
      can use another audio sink if you're not running Linux, but Mac OS X,
      Windows or FreeBSD, or you can instead use a filesink to write audio
      files to disk instead of playing them back. By using an audio card
      source, you can even do audio capture instead of playback. All this
      shows the reusability of &GStreamer; elements, which is its greatest
      advantage.
    </para>
  </sect1>
</chapter>