GstCurlHttpSrc

GstCurlHttpSrc is a GStreamer URIHandler plugin that supports getting resources from web servers using HTTP/HTTPS. It uses the curl library to acheive this, and supports HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.0 protocols. (Actual support is dependent on curl version and configuration)

GstCurlHttpSrc implements the URIHandler interface for http:// and https:// URIs, meaning as long as other gstreamer elements or applications use the URIHandler interface, they need not be changed to support this module as opposed to using any others.

UPDATE 2017-07-26: GstCurlHttpSrc is now merged into gst-plugins-bad, and should be available in the 1.14.0 stable release later this year.

Getting Started

GstCurlHttpSrc requires GStreamer 1.x and any modern version of libcurl. The curl library used may be optionally compiled against an SSL library such as OpenSSL for https:// support; and against nghttp2 for HTTP/2 support.

The software has been developed on Linux Mint 17 (Ubuntu 14.04-alike). This README has two parts; the Quick install and the Full install. The Quick install assumes that you already have a working version of cURL and GStreamer installed on your machine, in a sensible location. The Full install walks you through building GStreamer, curl, OpenSSL and nghttp2 from scratch.

In effect, use the Quick guide to just build this module, use the Full guide if you want everything.

Quick Guide

Download the source

$ git clone https://github.com/BBC/gst-curlhttpsrc.git

Build the source

$ cd gst-curlhttpsrc
$ ./autogen.sh
$ make
$ make install

Beware that if your GStreamer is installed in /usr or somewhere similar, you will need to be root in order to perform the last command.

Run the application

In order to just fetch one file and then dump to the console, you can do the following:

$ gst-launch-1.0 curlhttpsrc location=http://example.com/ ! fakesink dump=1

The following assumes that you have a build of GStreamer including all the necessary plugins in order to play an MPEG-DASH stream. The MPD file in question has AVC3 video and AAC audio, and comes from here. Full details of all representations and additional MPDs can be found at that link too.

$ gst-launch-1.0 playbin uri=http://rdmedia.bbc.co.uk/dash/ondemand/bbb/avc3/1/client_manifest-common_init.mpd

Default URIHandler

By default, GStreamer uses SoupHTTPSrc as it's URIHandler implementation for http and https URIs. In order to change back to using SoupHTTPSrc, you can either remove the CurlHttpSrc modules from /usr/lib/gstreamer-1.0 or you can change the element rank so that SoupHTTPSrc takes precidence once again. This value can be found at the bottom of the gstcurlhttpsrc.c file. Simply change the line that looks like this:

  return gst_element_register (curlhttpsrc, "curlhttpsrc", 500,
      GST_TYPE_CURLHTTPSRC);

To this:

  return gst_element_register (curlhttpsrc, "curlhttpsrc", 0,
      GST_TYPE_CURLHTTPSRC);

Full Guide

Required software

Build preface

It is important to know what you want to do with this software. The intended usage of this module (at least for the time being) is to show HTTP/2 working. This requires the usage of some pretty bleeding-edge software that may break, and as such I wouldn't recommend using it day-to-day or replacing your existing distribution-supplied versions unless you really want to.

The way I have built this software is to install it in a custom directory in my home folder, ~/build/target. The BUILD_PREFIX environment variable points to that directory, with my path being set as $BUILD_PREFIX/bin:$PATH, my LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable set as $BUILD_PREFIX/lib:$PATH and my PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable set as $BUILD_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig.

If you're fine to replace your existing software (or you don't have any Distribution supplied ones anyway), then you can ignore any --prefix or --exec-prefix options supplied in the build instructions below.

These are all external projects, and therefore the following instructions are just a guide. The projects are under no control by myself or the BBC and as such we take no responsibility for the following instructions being correct as and when you get hold of the software in question.

Build GStreamer

GStreamer itself comes in four parts:

• GStreamer Core
  • Contains the core GStreamer framework, as well as top-level applications such as gst-launch, gst-inspect and playbin.
• GStreamer-Plugins-Base
  • Contains the necessary frameworks to allow loadable plugins
• GStreamer-Plugins-Good
  • Contains a selection of plugins such as SoupHTTPSrc
• GStreamer-Plugins-Bad
  • Contains a selection of plugins with runnable code but lacking something to stop it from being counted as a "good" plugin, such as:
    • Needs a good code review.
    • Documentation needs improving.
    • No active maintainer.
    • Not being used in a widespread manner.

You'll need to build them in order to minimise any dependency issues. Thankfully, the build process is the same between each part.

$ cd gstreamer-1.4.3
$ ./configure --prefix=$BUILD_PREFIX
$ make && make install
$ cd ../gst-plugins-base-1.4.3
$ ./configure --prefix=$BUILD_PREFIX
$ make && make install
$ cd ../gst-plugins-good-1.4.3
$ # And so on...

Build OpenSSL (Optional)

$ cd openssl
$ ./config --prefix=$BUILD_PREFIX
$ make depend
$ make
$ make test
$ make install

Build nghttp2 (Optional)

$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure --prefix=$BUILD_PREFIX --exec-prefix=$BUILD_PREFIX
$ make
$ make install

Build libcurl

$ ./configure --prefix=$BUILD_PREFIX
$ make
$ make install

Build CurlHttpSrc

See the Quick Guide section.

Credits

This plugin contains code derived from the gst-template as provided by the GStreamer project.

License

See the LICENSE file.

Contributing

If you have a feature request or want to report a bug, we'd be happy to hear from you. Please either raise an issue, or fork the project and send us a pull request.

Authors

This software was written by Sam Hurst, samuelh rd.bbc.co.uk

Copyright

Copyright 2014 British Broadcasting Corporation