path: root/DOCS/man/ipc.rst

JSON IPC
========

mpv can be controlled by external programs using the JSON-based IPC protocol.
It can be enabled by specifying the path to a unix socket or a named pipe using
the option ``--input-ipc-server``. Clients can connect to this socket and send
commands to the player or receive events from it.

.. warning::

    This is not intended to be a secure network protocol. It is explicitly
    insecure: there is no authentication, no encryption, and the commands
    themselves are insecure too. For example, the ``run`` command is exposed,
    which can run arbitrary system commands. The use-case is controlling the
    player locally. This is not different from the MPlayer slave protocol.

Socat example
-------------

You can use the ``socat`` tool to send commands (and receive replies) from the
shell. Assuming mpv was started with:

::

    mpv file.mkv --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket

Then you can control it using socat:

::

    > echo '{ "command": ["get_property", "playback-time"] }' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket
    {"data":190.482000,"error":"success"}

In this case, socat copies data between stdin/stdout and the mpv socket
connection.

See the ``--idle`` option how to make mpv start without exiting immediately or
playing a file.

It's also possible to send input.conf style text-only commands:

::

    > echo 'show-text ${playback-time}' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket

But you won't get a reply over the socket. (This particular command shows the
playback time on the player's OSD.)

Command Prompt example
----------------------

Unfortunately, it's not as easy to test the IPC protocol on Windows, since
Windows ports of socat (in Cygwin and MSYS2) don't understand named pipes. In
the absence of a simple tool to send and receive from bidirectional pipes, the
``echo`` command can be used to send commands, but not receive replies from the
command prompt.

Assuming mpv was started with:

::

    mpv file.mkv --input-ipc-server=\\.\pipe\mpvsocket

You can send commands from a command prompt:

::

    echo show-text ${playback-time} >\\.\pipe\mpvsocket

To be able to simultaneously read and write from the IPC pipe, like on Linux,
it's necessary to write an external program that uses overlapped file I/O (or
some wrapper like .NET's NamedPipeClientStream.)

Protocol
--------

Clients can execute commands on the player by sending JSON messages of the
following form:

::

    { "command": ["command_name", "param1", "param2", ...] }

where ``command_name`` is the name of the command to be executed, followed by a
list of parameters. Parameters must be formatted as native JSON values
(integers, strings, booleans, ...). Every message **must** be terminated with
``\n``. Additionally, ``\n`` must not appear anywhere inside the message. In
practice this means that messages should be minified before being sent to mpv.

mpv will then send back a reply indicating whether the command was run
correctly, and an additional field holding the command-specific return data (it
can also be null).

::

    { "error": "success", "data": null }

mpv will also send events to clients with JSON messages of the following form:

::

    { "event": "event_name" }

where ``event_name`` is the name of the event. Additional event-specific fields
can also be present. See `List of events`_ for a list of all supported events.

Because events can occur at any time, it may be difficult at times to determine
which response goes with which command. Commands may optionally include a
``request_id`` which, if provided in the command request, will be copied
verbatim into the response. mpv does not intrepret the ``request_id`` in any
way; it is solely for the use of the requester.

For example, this request:

::

    { "command": ["get_property", "time-pos"], "request_id": 100 }

Would generate this response:

::

    { "error": "success", "data": 1.468135, "request_id": 100 }

All commands, replies, and events are separated from each other with a line
break character (``\n``).

If the first character (after skipping whitespace) is not ``{``, the command
will be interpreted as non-JSON text command, as they are used in input.conf
(or ``mpv_command_string()`` in the client API). Additionally, lines starting
with ``#`` and empty lines are ignored.

Currently, embedded 0 bytes terminate the current line, but you should not
rely on this.

Commands
--------

In addition to the commands described in `List of Input Commands`_, a few
extra commands can also be used as part of the protocol:

``client_name``
    Return the name of the client as string. This is the string ``ipc-N`` with
    N being an integer number.

``get_time_us``
    Return the current mpv internal time in microseconds as a number. This is
    basically the system time, with an arbitrary offset.

``get_property``
    Return the value of the given property. The value will be sent in the data
    field of the replay message.

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["get_property", "volume"] }
        { "data": 50.0, "error": "success" }

``get_property_string``
    Like ``get_property``, but the resulting data will always be a string.

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["get_property_string", "volume"] }
        { "data": "50.000000", "error": "success" }

``set_property``
    Set the given property to the given value. See `Properties`_ for more
    information about properties.

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["set_property", "pause", true] }
        { "error": "success" }

``set_property_string``
    Like ``set_property``, but the argument value must be passed as string.

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["set_property_string", "pause", "yes"] }
        { "error": "success" }

``observe_property``
    Watch a property for changes. If the given property is changed, then an
    event of type ``property-change`` will be generated

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["observe_property", 1, "volume"] }
        { "error": "success" }
        { "event": "property-change", "id": 1, "data": 52.0, "name": "volume" }

    .. warning::

        If the connection is closed, the IPC client is destroyed internally,
        and the observed properties are unregistered. This happens for example
        when sending commands to a socket with separate ``socat`` invocations.
        This can make it seem like property observation does not work. You must
        keep the IPC connection open to make it work.

``observe_property_string``
    Like ``observe_property``, but the resulting data will always be a string.

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["observe_property_string", 1, "volume"] }
        { "error": "success" }
        { "event": "property-change", "id": 1, "data": "52.000000", "name": "volume" }

``unobserve_property``
    Undo ``observe_property`` or ``observe_property_string``. This requires the
    numeric id passed to the observed command as argument.

    Example:

    ::

        { "command": ["unobserve_property", 1] }
        { "error": "success" }

``request_log_messages``
    Enable output of mpv log messages. They will be received as events. The
    parameter to this command is the log-level (see ``mpv_request_log_messages``
    C API function).

    Log message output is meant for humans only (mostly for debugging).
    Attempting to retrieve information by parsing these messages will just
    lead to breakages with future mpv releases. Instead, make a feature request,
    and ask for a proper event that returns the information you need.

``enable_event``, ``disable_event``
    Enables or disables the named event. Mirrors the ``mpv_request_event`` C
    API function. If the string ``all`` is used instead of an event name, all
    events are enabled or disabled.

    By default, most events are enabled, and there is not much use for this
    command.

``get_version``
    Returns the client API version the C API of the remote mpv instance
    provides.

    See also: ``DOCS/client-api-changes.rst``.

UTF-8
-----

Normally, all strings are in UTF-8. Sometimes it can happen that strings are
in some broken encoding (often happens with file tags and such, and filenames
on many Unixes are not required to be in UTF-8 either). This means that mpv
sometimes sends invalid JSON. If that is a problem for the client application's
parser, it should filter the raw data for invalid UTF-8 sequences and perform
the desired replacement, before feeding the data to its JSON parser.

mpv will not attempt to construct invalid UTF-8 with broken escape sequences.