Plugin clean-shutdown

[madcat]

Hi,

I'm doing my first steps in developing a plugin. I'm trying to write a client/server plugin, to control GBPVR playback over a TCP connection.

For this, I need my plugin act as a server, listening on sockets, etc.

I need to know when to close the sockets - in other words, when is GB going down.

I could not find any method in IMenuTask (nor in other interfaces) that will be called when GB is going down.

Event? messege? something I can register on?

Thanks.

[sub]

This is no notification given to plugins that GB-PVR is closing.

I've always found Windows to be pretty well behaved with freeing sockets when the processes closes unexpectedly, with the sockets not explicitly closed.

[madcat]

I must be doing something wrong, but...
Obviosuly, I need some kind of thread for the sockets, as otherwise the whole application will hang, right?

Now, the behavior I see is that if I close GB (From "Exit" in main menu), although the window closes, the process is still running.

I assume it's because of my thread still running.

Could not find example of plugins (with sources) that use threads and take care of some kind of shutting down.
For example, Weather plugin, starts threads, but does not take care of shutting/closing/killing them in case they get hand and the applicaiton is closing.

What am I missing?

[sub]

Did you set you thread to be a background thread? You should.

Code:

myThread.IsBackground = true;

[madcat]

Did you set you thread to be a background thread? You should.

Code:

myThread.IsBackground = true;

thanks, that did it...

[madcat]

However...

I still can not find any way to get notifications from the app to the plugin.
For example, can the plugin be "notified" that something has happened? e.g. a song is playing, paused, etc. or a video is playing, or whatever happenes.
Messeges? events? callbacks? something?

Thanks.

[sub]

If your plugin implements the IEventNotification interface, then it's Notify() method will be automatically called each time an event occurs.

The events you will be notified for are:

CurrentAudioTrack,
CurrentVideoTrack,
CurrentChannelNumber,
CurrentChannelName,
VideoStopping,
MusicStopping,
DVDPlaybackStarted,
DVDPlaybackStopping,
MVPConnected,
MVPDisconnected,
ScreenSaverActivated,
ScreenSaverDeactivated,
CurrentVideoPath

[madcat]

Once again... what am I doing wrong?

I justed added the

Code:

public class RemotePlugin : IMenuTask , IEventNotification

and

Code:

public void Notify(EventTypes eventType, string eventText)
        {
            Logger.Verbose("NOTIFY:\n\ttype=" + eventType.ToString() + "\n\ttext=" + eventText);
        }

(OR even an empty method) and what I get in the log file is:

Code:

19/06/2006 13:34:15.080    ERROR    [1]    Error initializing event plugin: C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\plugins\RemotePlugin.dll
19/06/2006 13:34:15.080    ERROR    [1]    Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
19/06/2006 13:34:15.090    ERROR    [1]       at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks, Boolean fillCache)
   at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic)
   at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type)
   at GBPVR.Backend.Common.xc4f12ec3a8a4c96b.xb77fa95273e0c228()

[madcat]

And (not terribly important), why not add to it something like ApplicationExiting, can help for cleanups if needed (although we solved my thread problems already...

[sub]

Once again... what am I doing wrong?

I justed added the

Code:

public class RemotePlugin : IMenuTask , IEventNotification

and

Code:

public void Notify(EventTypes eventType, string eventText)
        {
            Logger.Verbose("NOTIFY:\n\ttype=" + eventType.ToString() + "\n\ttext=" + eventText);
        }

(OR even an empty method) and what I get in the log file is:

Code:

19/06/2006 13:34:15.080    ERROR    [1]    Error initializing event plugin: C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\plugins\RemotePlugin.dll
19/06/2006 13:34:15.080    ERROR    [1]    Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
19/06/2006 13:34:15.090    ERROR    [1]       at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks, Boolean fillCache)
   at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic)
   at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type)
   at GBPVR.Backend.Common.xc4f12ec3a8a4c96b.xb77fa95273e0c228()

Tons of other plugins are doing this without any problems. I'd have to guess your plugin is generating an exception in the constructor.