Phonon

Tutorial Factbox

Time to replay	20 min
Example Distro	SUSE Linux 11.4
Type	Howto
Happy readers	2
Unhappy readers	0

Introduction

The following is based on the documentation available here.

By getting involved with Phonon, you can choose between three different main tasks.

• Using the Phonon API, which allows you to develop your own multimedia application. Start here.

• Hacking the Phonon library.

• Writing Phonon backend, this consists in writing interfaces that allows Phonon to use different sound/video engine. This usually requires good skills and knowledge of the engine you interface with.

Using the phonon API

The following example lets you select a music file and plays it. To change the sound device that is used by default, use the command systemsettings.

CMakeLists.txt

You need a file CMakeLists.txt to compile the software later:

project (tutorial2)
find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)
include (KDE4Defaults)
include_directories(${KDE4_INCLUDES})
set(tutorial1_SRCS main.cpp)
kde4_add_executable(tutorial2 ${tutorial1_SRCS})
target_link_libraries(tutorial2 ${KDE4_KDEUI_LIBS} phonon)
install(TARGETS tutorial2  ${INSTALL_TARGETS_DEFAULT_ARGS})

main.cpp

#include <phonon/mediaobject.h>
#include <phonon/audiooutput.h>

#include <QFileDialog>
#include <QtGui/QApplication>
#include <QtGui/QMainWindow>
#include <QUrl>

class MainWindow : public QMainWindow
{
    Q_OBJECT
    public:
        MainWindow();
};

MainWindow::MainWindow()
{
    Phonon::MediaObject* media = new Phonon::MediaObject(this);
    Phonon::createPath(media, new Phonon::AudioOutput(Phonon::MusicCategory, this));
    media->setCurrentSource(QFileDialog::getOpenFileName(0,QString("Select a file to play"),QString()));
    media->play();
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    QApplication app(argc, argv);
    QApplication::setApplicationName("Phonon Tutorial 2");
    MainWindow mw;
    mw.show();
    return app.exec();
}

#include "main.moc"

Compile and run it

cmake . && make && ./tutorial2

Getting more help

To talk among phonon experts, point your irc client to the server irc.freenode.org, channel #phonon.

See also

• Development/Tutorials/Phonon/Introduction/Python - same example in Python