THEOplayer React native SDK is an NPM package, which exposes the THEOplayerView component that can be added to your React Native projects.
This section will discuss the most important properties of THEOplayerView
.
The component's properties are also described in detail in
its THEOplayerViewProps interface.
THEOplayer React Native SDK uses HTML5/ Tizen/ webOS SDK, Android/ Fire TV SDK, and iOS/ tvOS SDK under the hood through bridges that map each THEO SDK API to the THEOplayerView component.
- Properties
- Configuration
- Chromeless vs. Chromefull
- Setting a source
- Seeking to a position in a stream
- Text tracks and media tracks
- Preview thumbnails
- Buffering state changes
The THEOplayerView
component supports the following list of properties.
Property | Description | Platforms |
---|---|---|
config |
The player configuration containing the THEOplayer license and other player-setup related properties | All |
style |
The style applied to the player view. | All |
onPlayerReady |
A callback that provides the THEOplayer API when the player instance is ready. | All |
onPlayerDestroy |
A callback is called when the internal player instance will be destroyed. | All |
The THEOplayerView
component accepts a config
property that contains basic player configuration.
const player: PlayerConfiguration = {
license: undefined, //'insert THEOplayer license for react-native here'
chromeless: true,
};
The license
is an obfuscated string that contains the THEOplayer license needed for play-out, and which can be found
in your THEOplayer Portal account. You can generate a license specifically for react-native, but if separate licenses per platform are needed, Platform.select()
could be used to
configure them:
const license = Platform.select(
{
'android': undefined, // insert Android THEOplayer license here
'ios': undefined, // insert iOS THEOplayer license here
'web': undefined, // insert Web THEOplayer license here
});
If no license is provided, only sources hosted on the theoplayer.com
domain can be played. On Web platforms,
CORS rules applied on theoplayer.com
will also prohibit playing sources from this domain.
On Android and Web platforms, you can control the ABR configuration using player.abr
on
the THEOplayer API.
We refer to the Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) page for detailed information, including examples.
PlayerConfiguration.chromeless
relates to whether the underlying native SDK provides the UI or not.
If chromeless = true
, the player does not include the native UI provided by the SDK and it is expected the UI is
created in React Native. The accompanying example application provides a basic UI created in React Native.
PlayerConfiguration.ui
has a configuration property 'language' that allows you to set the language for localisation when native UI elements (e.g. 'skip ad' being displayed on the skip butten in the ad UI) are presented to the user. This only applies to UI elements rendered by the native SDK's and not to other UI elements added via your react-native view stack.
You can set a source using the source
property on the THEOplayer API. The type
definition of SourceDescription
maps to the type used in
the Web SDK's documentation.
player.source = {
"sources": {
"src": "https://cdn.theoplayer.com/video/elephants-dream/playlist-single-audio.m3u8",
"type": "application/x-mpegurl"
}
}
Changing the player's current time, or seeking to a specific timestamp, is done by setting currentTime
on the THEOplayer API.
Timestamps are measured in milliseconds.
player.currentTime = 20_000; // msec
The text tracks and media tracks available in the stream are provided by the PlayerEventType.LOADED_METADATA
event,
which is dispatched by the THEOplayer API.
import { PlayerEventType } from "./PlayerEventMap";
import { LoadedMetadataEvent } from "./PlayerEvent";
const onLoadedMetadata = (event: LoadedMetadataEvent) => {
console.log(TAG, 'loadedmetadata', JSON.stringify(event));
};
player.addEventListener(PlayerEventType.LOADED_METADATA, onLoadedMetadata)
The PlayerEventType.TEXT_TRACK_LIST
event can be used to dynamically listen to text tracks that are being added,
removed or changed. Similarly, for text track cues, the PlayerEventType.TEXT_TRACK
event provides knowledge on cues
being added or removed.
The PlayerEventType.MEDIA_TRACK_LIST
event can be used to dynamically listen to audio and video tracks (being added,
removed or changed). On Android and Web, media tracks trigger the PlayerEventType.MEDIA_TRACK
callback with
information on quality changes. This information is not available on iOS systems.
Preview thumbnails are contained in a dedicated thumbnail track, which is a text track of kind metadata
with label
thumbnails
. The track can be either side-loaded to the stream source, or contained in a stream manifest, as the demo
sources in the example application demonstrate. The example also contains an implementation
of a thumbnail viewer.
The PlayerEventType.WAITING
event is dispatched to indicate that the player has stopped playback because the next
frame's data is currently unavailable, but is expected to come in soon.
It could be coupled to an activity indicator that is part of the UI.
The PlayerEventType.PLAYING
event is dispatched once playback continues.
Alternatively, changes in readyState
could be observed through the PlayerEventType.READYSTATE_CHANGE
event.
Since this value can sometimes switch radically, it is advised
to add a time-out when using PlayerEventType.READYSTATE_CHANGE
in combination with a UI loading indicator.
The UI of the example application illustrates a possible implementation.