Examples
This page contains collection of small examples to show of the features of SoCo and hopefully get you well started with the library.
All examples are shown as if entered in the Python interpreter (as apposed to executed from a file) because that makes it easy to incorporate output in the code listings.
All the examples from :ref:`examples_playback_control` and forward
assume that you have followed one of the examples in
:ref:`examples_getting_your_devices` and therefore already have a
variable named device
that points to a :class:`soco.SoCo`
instance.
Getting your devices
Getting all your devices
To get all your devices use the :func:`soco.discover` function:
>>> import soco >>> devices = soco.discover() >>> devices set([SoCo("192.168.0.10"), SoCo("192.168.0.30"), SoCo("192.168.0.17")]) >>> device = devices.pop() >>> device SoCo("192.168.0.16")
Getting any device
To get any device use the :func:`soco.discovery.any_soco` function. This can be useful for cases where you really do not care which one you get, you just need one e.g. to query for music library information:
>>> import soco >>> device = soco.discovery.any_soco() >>> device SoCo("192.168.0.16")
Getting a named device
Getting a device by player name can be done with the :func:`soco.discovery.by_name` function:
>>> from soco.discovery import by_name >>> device = by_name("Living Room") >>> device SoCo("192.168.1.18")
Handling groups of devices
Information about a group
To get information about a group, pick a device and use the :attr:`~soco.core.SoCo.all_groups` property:
>>> import soco >>> devices = {device.player_name: device for device in soco.discover()} >>> devices {'Living Room': SoCo("192.168.1.47"), 'Office': SoCo("192.168.1.48")} >>> devices['Living Room'].all_groups {ZoneGroup(uid='RINCON_347E5C68F04001400:2900176654', coordinator=SoCo("192.168.1.48"), members={SoCo("192.168.1.48")}), ZoneGroup(uid='RINCON_7828CAF58E6E01400:3613865501', coordinator=SoCo("192.168.1.47"), members={SoCo("192.168.1.47")})}
In the case above, there are two independent devices, one group for each device with the device as its only member.
Join/unjoin devices
You can use the :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.join` method to join a device to another 'master' device:
>>> devices['Office'].join(devices['Living Room']) >>> devices['Living Room'].all_groups {ZoneGroup(uid='RINCON_7828CAF58E6E01400:3613865501', coordinator=SoCo("192.168.1.47"), members={SoCo("192.168.1.47"), SoCo("192.168.1.48")})}
Now, there is a single group composed of the two devices, with the Living Room device as the coordinator of the group.
Use the :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.unjoin` method to unjoin a device in a group:
>>> devices['Living Room'].unjoin() >>> devices['Living Room'].all_groups {ZoneGroup(uid='RINCON_7828CAF58E6E01400:3613865501', coordinator=SoCo("192.168.1.48"), members={SoCo("192.168.1.48")}), ZoneGroup(uid='RINCON_7828CAF58E6E01400:3613865502', coordinator=SoCo("192.168.1.47"), members={SoCo("192.168.1.47")})}
Party mode
Use the :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.partymode` method to join all the devices in your network into a single group, in one command:
>>> devices['Living Room'].partymode() >>> devices['Living Room'].all_groups {ZoneGroup(uid='RINCON_7828CAF58E6E01400:3613865501', coordinator=SoCo("192.168.1.47"), members={SoCo("192.168.1.47"), SoCo("192.168.1.48")})}
Playback control
Play, pause and stop
The normal play, pause and stop functionality is provided with similarly named methods (:meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.play`, :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.pause` and :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.stop`) on the :class:`~soco.core.SoCo` instance and the current state is included in the output of :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.get_current_transport_info`:
>>> device.get_current_transport_info()['current_transport_state'] 'STOPPED' >>> device.play() >>> device.get_current_transport_info()['current_transport_state'] 'PLAYING' >>> device.pause() >>> device.get_current_transport_info()['current_transport_state'] 'PAUSED_PLAYBACK'
More playback control with next, previous and seek
Navigating to the next or previous track is similarly done with methods of the same name (:meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.next` and :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.previous`) and information about the current position in the queue is contained in the output from :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.get_current_track_info`:
>>> device.get_current_track_info()['playlist_position'] '29' >>> device.next() >>> device.get_current_track_info()['playlist_position'] '30' >>> device.previous() >>> device.get_current_track_info()['playlist_position'] '29'
Seeking is done with the :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.seek` method. Note that the input for that method is a string on the form "HH:MM:SS" or "H:MM:SS". The current position is also contained in :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.get_current_track_info`:
>>> device.get_current_track_info()['position'] '0:02:59' >>> device.seek("0:00:30") >>> device.get_current_track_info()['position'] '0:00:31'
Control of a group
Only the coordinator of a group can control playback (play, pause, stop, next, previous, seek commands) and manage the queue (add or remove track, clear the queue). A :class:`~soco.exceptions.SoCoSlaveException` exception will be raised if a master-only command is called on a non-coordinator device.
Other commands like volume, loudness and treble, mute, night mode can be controlled on each individual player in the group.
You can use the :attr:`~soco.core.SoCo.is_coordinator` property to see if a device is the coordinator:
>>> devices['Living Room'].is_coordinator True
From a device, you can get the coordinator of a group by using the :attr:`~soco.core.SoCo.group` property of the :class:`~soco.core.SoCo` instance, which returns a :class:`~soco.groups.ZoneGroup` instance allowing access to its :attr:`~soco.groups.ZoneGroup.coordinator` property:
>>> devices['Living Room'].group.coordinator SoCo("192.168.1.47") >>> devices['Office'].group.coordinator SoCo("192.168.1.47")
To set a group volume, use the :attr:`~soco.groups.ZoneGroup.volume` property or the :meth:`~soco.groups.ZoneGroup.set_relative_volume` method:
>>> # let's define some aliases ... >>> lr = devices['Living Room'] >>> of = devices['Office'] >>> lr.volume, of.volume (17, 10) >>> g = lr.group # alias to the group >>> g.volume 13 >>> g.volume = 20 >>> lr.volume, of.volume (27, 13)
Seeing and manipulating the queue
Getting the queue
Getting the queue is done with the :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.get_queue` method:
>>> queue = device.get_queue() >>> queue Queue(items=[<DidlMusicTrack 'b'Blackened'' at 0x7f2237006dd8>, ..., <DidlMusicTrack 'b'Dyers Eve'' at 0x7f2237006828>])
The returned :class:`~soco.data_structures.Queue` object is a sequence of items from the queue, meaning that it can be iterated over and its length aquired with :func:`len`:
>>> len(queue) 9 >>> for item in queue: ... print(item.title) ... Blackened ...and Justice for All Eye of the Beholder One The Shortest Straw Harvester of Sorrow The Frayed Ends of Sanity To Live Is to Die Dyers Eve
The queue object also has :attr:`~.ListOfMusicInfoItems.total_matches` and :attr:`~.ListOfMusicInfoItems.number_returned` attributes, which are used to figure out whether paging is required in order to get all elements of the queue. See the :class:`~.ListOfMusicInfoItems` docstring for details.
Clearing the queue
Clearing the queue is done with the :meth:`~soco.core.SoCo.clear_queue` method as follows:
>>> queue = device.get_queue() >>> len(queue) 9 >>> device.clear_queue() >>> queue = device.get_queue() >>> len(queue) 0
Listing and deleting music library shares
Music library shares are the local network drive shares connected to Sonos, which host the audio content in the Sonos Music Library.
To list the shares connected to Sonos, use the :meth:`~soco.music_library.MusicLibrary.list_library_shares` method as follows:
>>> device.music_library.list_library_shares() ['//share_host_01/music', '//share_host_02/music']
The result is a list of network share locations.
To delete a network share, use the :meth:`~soco.music_library.MusicLibrary.delete_library_share` method as follows:
>>> device.music_library.delete_library_share('//share_host_01/music')
You may want to check that the deletion has succeeded, by waiting a few seconds, then confirming that the share has disappeared from the list of shares.