Wowza REST APIs and HTTP Providers

This article show the different ways to make calls to Wowza Media Engine from external applications and environments for various purposes  such as getting server status , listeners , connections , applications and its streams etc .

HTTP Providers

HTTP Providers are Java classes that are configured on a per-virtual host basis.

Some pre packaged HTTP providers that return data in XML  :

1. HTTPConnectionCountsXML

Returns connection information like Vhost , application , application instance , message in bytes rate , message out byte rates etc.

http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:8086/connectioncounts

2. HTTPConnectionInfo
Returns detailed connection information such as

http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:8086/connectioninfo

server=1

3. HTTPServerVersion

Returns the Wowza Media Server version and build number. It’s the default HTTP Provider on port 1935.

url : http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:1935

Wowza Streaming Engine 4 Monthly Edition 4.1.1 build13180

4. HTTPLiveStreamRecord

gets the web interface to record online streams

url : http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:8086/livestreamrecord

5. HTTPServerInfoXML

Returns server and connection information

url :http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:8086/serverinfo

6. HTTPClientAccessPolicy .

It is used for fetching the Microsoft Silverlight clientaccesspolicy.xml from the conf folder.

7. HTTPCrossdomain

To get the Adobe Flash crossdomain.xml file from [install-dir]/conf folder.

8.HTTPProviderMediaList

Dynamic method for generating adaptive bitrate manifests and playlists from SMIL data.

9.HTTPStreamManager

The Stream Manager returns all applications and their stream in web interface.

url http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:8086/streammanager).

10 .HTTPTranscoderThumbnail

Returns a bitmap image from the source stream being transcoded.

url: http://%5Bwowza-ip-address%5D:8086/transcoderthumbnail?application=%5Bapplication-name%5D&streamname=%5Bstream-name%5D&format=%5Bjpeg or png]&size=[widthxheight]

Each HTTP provider can be configured with different request filter and authentication method ( none , basic , digest).  We can even create our own substitutes for the HTTP providers as defined in the next section .

Extending HTTProvider2Base

The following code snippet describes the process of creating a Wowza Web services that return a json containing all the values .

Imports to build a HTTP provider

import com.wowza.wms.application.*;
import com.wowza.wms.vhost.*;
import com.wowza.wms.http.*;
import com.wowza.wms.httpstreamer.model.*;

//since we want to return in json format

import org.json.simple.JSONObject;

The class declaration is as folllows

public class DCWS extends HTTProvider2Base
{

....

}

The code to extract application names

public JSONObject listChannels(){

JSONObject obj=new JSONObject();

//get params from virtual host and iterate through it
List<String> vhostNames = VHostSingleton.getVHostNames();
Iterator<String> iter = vhostNames.iterator();
while (iter.hasNext())
{
String vhostName = iter.next();
IVHost vhost = (IVHost)VHostSingleton.getInstance(vhostName);
List<String> appNames = vhost.getApplicationNames();
Iterator<String> appNameIterator = appNames.iterator();

int i=0;
while (appNameIterator.hasNext())
{
String applicationName = appNameIterator.next();

try {
String key = "channel"+ (++i);
obj.put(key, URLEncoder.encode(applicationName, "UTF-8"));
}

catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
return obj;
}

The code which responds to HTTP request

TBD..

Ref :

• http://www.wowza.com/forums/content.php?30-http-providers
• http://www.wowza.com/forums/content.php?642-wowza-streaming-engine-rest-api