Are Site Configurations ever required?

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
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Hi. I’m just trying to come up to speed so I can make my first plugin. I’m wondering if Site Configurations are ever required? Are there things you can do with a Site Configuration that you cannot do through the Python API or are they just meant to simplify things? Are the Site Configurations meant to work in conjunction with the Python API or do you only use one or the other?



In case it helps or you have any other tips, what I’m trying to do is get this site [ckpk.streamon.fm/] to play in Plex. I’m still trying to figure out how to do this because the audio on the site is flash, but everything else is HTML/Javascript so I’m not exactly clear on whether a Site Configuration even applies.



Thanks a lot!



Jeff

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A site config file is only used to specify interaction with a Flash or Silverlight audio/video stream when it’s not possible to access the media files directly. In such cases the site config file works in conjunction with the python API to provide the complete channel experience to the user.

The python plugin code is responsible for building the directories with the available media by navigating the source web page (or RSS feed, or API), and where possible passing direct media URLs to the Plex media player.

From your description, it sounds like you will probably need a site config.

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Thanks Mike. I have a couple of follow up questions.


  1. Here it mentions that, “Playback of Flash or Silverlight content using site configurations is currently only supported on Mac OS X.” Does that mean that there is no way to play Flash content at all on non-OS X platforms (within Plex of course)? I’m on OS X myself, I’m just curious.


  2. Do you know if there is a relatively simple plugin that uses a site config that I could check out? One of the plugins that I use that I was pretty sure was using flash doesn’t seem to contain a site config so I’m a little confused… I also want to check out how exactly the Python script interacts with the media and controls captured by the site config. This doesn’t seem to be documented on the page mentioned above.



    Thanks again.
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  1. That’s no longer correct - the Windows version of PMS gained the ability to play WebKit-based content as of version 0.9.5.


  2. Check inside SiteConfigurations.bundle - most of the site config files are stored in there. The Python scripts themselves don’t actually interact with the players. The scripts simply give the media server’s WebKit engine the URL of a page containing a video. The server then finds the relevant site configuration file and uses the instructions within to determine how the page should be handled.
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