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 decode 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>pad-added</quote> event handler
      on the <quote>oggdemux</quote> element, like you've learned in
      <xref linkend="section-pads-dynamic"/>, to link the Ogg demuxer and
      the Vorbis decoder elements together. At last, we'll also need an
      audio output element, we will use <quote>autoaudiosink</quote>, which
      automatically detects your 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 also attach
      a message handler to the pipeline bus so we can retrieve errors
      and detect the end-of-stream.
    </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;
#include &lt;glib.h&gt;


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 ("End of stream\n");
      g_main_loop_quit (loop);
      break;

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

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

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

      g_main_loop_quit (loop);
      break;
    }
    default:
      break;
  }

  return TRUE;
}


static void
on_pad_added (GstElement *element,
              GstPad     *pad,
              gpointer    data)
{
  GstPad *sinkpad;
  GstElement *decoder = (GstElement *) data;

  /* We can now link this pad with the vorbis-decoder sink pad */
  g_print ("Dynamic pad created, linking demuxer/decoder\n");

  sinkpad = gst_element_get_static_pad (decoder, "sink");

  gst_pad_link (pad, sinkpad);

  gst_object_unref (sinkpad);
}



int
main (int   argc,
      char *argv[])
{
  GMainLoop *loop;

  GstElement *pipeline, *source, *demuxer, *decoder, *conv, *sink;
  GstBus *bus;

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

  loop = g_main_loop_new (NULL, FALSE);


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


  /* Create gstreamer elements */
  pipeline = gst_pipeline_new ("audio-player");
  source   = gst_element_factory_make ("filesrc",       "file-source");
  demuxer  = gst_element_factory_make ("oggdemux",      "ogg-demuxer");
  decoder  = gst_element_factory_make ("vorbisdec",     "vorbis-decoder");
  conv     = gst_element_factory_make ("audioconvert",  "converter");
  sink     = gst_element_factory_make ("autoaudiosink", "audio-output");

  if (!pipeline || !source || !demuxer || !decoder || !conv || !sink) {
    g_printerr ("One element could not be created. Exiting.\n");
    return -1;
  }

  /* Set up the pipeline */

  /* we set the input filename to the source element */
  g_object_set (G_OBJECT (source), "location", argv[1], NULL);

  /* we add a message handler */
  bus = gst_pipeline_get_bus (GST_PIPELINE (pipeline));
  gst_bus_add_watch (bus, bus_call, loop);
  gst_object_unref (bus);

  /* we add all elements into the pipeline */
  /* file-source | ogg-demuxer | vorbis-decoder | converter | alsa-output */
  gst_bin_add_many (GST_BIN (pipeline),
                    source, demuxer, decoder, conv, sink, NULL);

  /* we link the elements together */
  /* file-source -&gt; ogg-demuxer ~&gt; vorbis-decoder -&gt; converter -&gt; alsa-output */
  gst_element_link (source, demuxer);
  gst_element_link_many (decoder, conv, sink, NULL);
  g_signal_connect (demuxer, "pad-added", G_CALLBACK (on_pad_added), decoder);

  /* note that the demuxer will be linked to the decoder dynamically.
     The reason is that Ogg may contain various streams (for example
     audio and video). The source pad(s) will be created at run time,
     by the demuxer when it detects the amount and nature of streams.
     Therefore we connect a callback function which will be executed
     when the "pad-added" is emitted.*/


  /* Set the pipeline to "playing" state*/
  g_print ("Now playing: %s\n", argv[1]);
  gst_element_set_state (pipeline, GST_STATE_PLAYING);


  /* Iterate */
  g_print ("Running...\n");
  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);

  g_print ("Deleting pipeline\n");
  gst_object_unref (GST_OBJECT (pipeline));

  return 0;
}
<!-- example-end helloworld.c -->
    </programlisting>
    <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 scale="75" 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
      helloworld.c -o helloworld
      $(pkg-config --cflags --libs gstreamer-&GST_MAJORMINOR;)</command>.
      &GStreamer; makes use of <command>pkg-config</command> to get compiler
      and linker flags needed to compile this application.
    </para>
    <para>
      If you're running a non-standard installation (ie. you've installed
      GStreamer from source yourself instead of using pre-built packages),
      make sure the <classname>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</classname> environment variable
      is set to the correct location (<filename>$libdir/pkgconfig</filename>).
    </para>
    <para>
      In the unlikely case that you are using an uninstalled GStreamer
      setup (ie. gst-uninstalled), you will need to use libtool to build the
      hello world program, like this: <command>libtool --mode=link gcc -Wall
      helloworld.c -o helloworld
      $(pkg-config --cflags --libs gstreamer-&GST_MAJORMINOR;)</command>.
    </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/demuxers 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>