Support for XBMC JSON-RPC ?

[ajith]

James,

As has been proclaimed by the good folk at xbmc.org, the HTTP API that we're now using with VC are "soon-to-be-deprecated" in favor of JSON-RPC (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=JSON-RPC_API).
I'm sure you have plans of incorporating support for JSON-RPC when the time comes.

I though it may be good to have some form of preliminary support early, so we can play around with the new API and be ready for the day when XBMC completely removes support for the old HTTP API.

I tried using some of the already implemented XBMC JSON API via EventGhost (driven by VC) and I found it cumbersome to do it using Python http POST (Is there an easy way?). I wish we had some kind of JSON builder in VC that can dynamically build an interface (for creating the JSON payload) via introspection (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=JSON-RPC_API/v3#JSONRPC.Introspect).

That probably might be a tall order and is definitely going to take a lot of time. Just wanted to know what you thought


-Ajith

[jitterjames]

Actually it was deprecated quite a long time ago (i.e. the http api is no longer supported in any way and no longer gets any updates or bug fixes), but we have been assured that support for access to the http api will not be removed any time soon.  Actually we were told that it would NEVER be removed but I don't actually believe that.

JSON in XBMC is cumbersome and is going to make genXML a giant PITA.  It is also missing a lot of the features that we use all the time, so I am still waiting.  The way I see it there is no rush.  HTTP api is not going to disappear overnight.  Worst case scenario we will be in a situation where we cannot upgrade to the latest nightlies of XBMC because they have removed the http api.  At that point, I will give it some serious thought.

For the time being I still consider this a low priority.  It is certainly not something I have forgotten about, and it will happen one day.

If I did slap together something quick and dirty, it would probably not be representative of what we would actually end up with in the long run.

[ajith]

That makes sense. Thanks for the detailed reply