Playability of a file in windows media player

[sri2097]

Basically,
I want to check if a URL is playable or not (without actually playing
it).
i.e. given a URL I want to write an automation script to figure it out
for me
if it's playable or not. If you give a bad/invalid URL for windows
media
player to play a pop-up window shows us that it cannot be played. So
I would want to catch that event.

I have found 2 ways to do this -

1)

import win32com.client, win32api, sre, time

data = file("webclips.txt")
web_clips = data.readlines ()

shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
shell.Run("wmplayer.exe")
shell.AppActivate("Windows Media Player")
win32api.Sleep(100)

print "Total :", len(web_clips)

for webclip in web_clips:
shell.SendKeys("^u", 0)
shell.AppActivate("Open URL")

shell.SendKeys("{DEL}")
shell.SendKeys(webclip)
shell.SendKeys("~")
time.sleep(25)

if shell.AppActivate("Windows Media Player"):
webclip = webclip
not_there.append(webclip)
shell.SendKeys("~")

print len(not_there)
print "Not here: ", not_there
~

In this way I manually fire Windows media player and do the checking.
But It's a brute force way of solving the problem (since for every URL
I keep a
time-out of 25 seconds). As a result it takes a lot of time.I had to
look for a
better solution. My second solution uses Windows much hyped ActiveX
controls.

2)

from win32com.client import Dispatch,DispatchWithEvents

class WMPEvents:
def OnVisible(self,evt):
print "OnVisible changed:",evt
def OnError(self,evt=None):
print "OnError",evt
def OnMediaError(self,evt=None):
print "OnMediaError",evt
def OnDisconnect(self,evt):
print "OnDisconnect",evt
def OnStatusChange(self):
print "OnStatusChange"
def OnDisconnect(self,evt):
print "Disconnect",evt
def OnBuffering(self,evt):
print "OnBuffering changed:",evt
def OnOpenStateChange(self,evt=None):
print "OnOpenStateChange" ,evt

mp = DispatchWithEvents("WMPlayer.OCX", WMPEvents)
mp.settings.autoStart = True
webclip_playlist = mp.newPlaylist('Web_Clips', "")

raw_web_clips = []
data = file("webclips.txt")
web_clips = data.readlines()

for url in web_clips:
tune = mp.newMedia(url)
mp.currentPlaylist.appendItem(tune)
mp.controls.playItem (tune)
mp.controls.play()
mp.controls.stop()

raw_input("Press enter to stop playing")
mp.controls.stop()
mp.close()

This solution is much faster. But still I'm not able to solve it.
Initially I had
planned to use the "OnOpenStateChange" event to detect if a given URL
is in
a state just about to be opened. That's good enough for me to declare
that a
URL can be played. But as written in MSDN, they suggest not to rely on
state
changes as a definitive way to find details. So, I had to find an
alternative.
There is an event called "OnBuffering", i.e. when a link is found and
is just
about to be buffered this event (Boolean value) is triggered. But it
never seem
to happen.

I would be truly grateful if you can help in any way.

[Roger Upole]

The below code will catch the OnError event that's
triggered when you specify a bad URL.

import win32com.client
class wmpevents:
def OnOpenStateChange(self, NewState):
"""Sent when the control changes OpenState"""
print 'OnOpenStateChange', NewState
if NewState==win32com.client.constants.wmposMediaOpen :
print "Media successfully opened"
def OnError(self):
"""Sent when the control has an error condition"""
print 'OnError'
print self.Error.Item(0).errorCode, self.Error.Item(0).errorDescription
self.Error.clearErrorQueue()

win32com.client.gencache.EnsureDispatch('WMPlayer. OCX',0)
w=win32com.client.DispatchWithEvents('WMPlayer.OCX ', wmpevents)
w.URL='some bad URL'

Roger

"sri2097" <sr********@gmail.com> wrote in message news:11**********************@j73g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

Basically,
I want to check if a URL is playable or not (without actually playing
it).
i.e. given a URL I want to write an automation script to figure it out
for me
if it's playable or not. If you give a bad/invalid URL for windows
media
player to play a pop-up window shows us that it cannot be played. So
I would want to catch that event.

I have found 2 ways to do this -

1)

import win32com.client, win32api, sre, time

data = file("webclips.txt")
web_clips = data.readlines ()

shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
shell.Run("wmplayer.exe")
shell.AppActivate("Windows Media Player")
win32api.Sleep(100)

print "Total :", len(web_clips)

for webclip in web_clips:
shell.SendKeys("^u", 0)
shell.AppActivate("Open URL")

shell.SendKeys("{DEL}")
shell.SendKeys(webclip)
shell.SendKeys("~")
time.sleep(25)

if shell.AppActivate("Windows Media Player"):
webclip = webclip
not_there.append(webclip)
shell.SendKeys("~")

print len(not_there)
print "Not here: ", not_there
~

In this way I manually fire Windows media player and do the checking.
But It's a brute force way of solving the problem (since for every URL
I keep a
time-out of 25 seconds). As a result it takes a lot of time.I had to
look for a
better solution. My second solution uses Windows much hyped ActiveX
controls.

2)

from win32com.client import Dispatch,DispatchWithEvents

class WMPEvents:
def OnVisible(self,evt):
print "OnVisible changed:",evt
def OnError(self,evt=None):
print "OnError",evt
def OnMediaError(self,evt=None):
print "OnMediaError",evt
def OnDisconnect(self,evt):
print "OnDisconnect",evt
def OnStatusChange(self):
print "OnStatusChange"
def OnDisconnect(self,evt):
print "Disconnect",evt
def OnBuffering(self,evt):
print "OnBuffering changed:",evt
def OnOpenStateChange(self,evt=None):
print "OnOpenStateChange" ,evt

mp = DispatchWithEvents("WMPlayer.OCX", WMPEvents)
mp.settings.autoStart = True
webclip_playlist = mp.newPlaylist('Web_Clips', "")

raw_web_clips = []
data = file("webclips.txt")
web_clips = data.readlines()

for url in web_clips:
tune = mp.newMedia(url)
mp.currentPlaylist.appendItem(tune)
mp.controls.playItem (tune)
mp.controls.play()
mp.controls.stop()

raw_input("Press enter to stop playing")
mp.controls.stop()
mp.close()

This solution is much faster. But still I'm not able to solve it.
Initially I had
planned to use the "OnOpenStateChange" event to detect if a given URL
is in
a state just about to be opened. That's good enough for me to declare
that a
URL can be played. But as written in MSDN, they suggest not to rely on
state
changes as a definitive way to find details. So, I had to find an
alternative.
There is an event called "OnBuffering", i.e. when a link is found and
is just
about to be buffered this event (Boolean value) is triggered. But it
never seem
to happen.

I would be truly grateful if you can help in any way.