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Documenting RenewedVision's undocumented Remote Control protocol with examples

ProPresenter-API

7.9 UPDATE & PUBLIC API

The upcoming 7.9 release of ProPresenter will include an officially supported public API.

The official documentation page is here:

https://renewedvision.com/propresenter/api/

The full auto-generated Swagger HTML is a bit easier to navigate, and it is here:

https://renewedvision.com/api_spec/index.html

And, the actual source OPENAPI spec document (JS) is here:

https://renewedvision.com/api_spec/swagger.json

But I'm mirroring it here as a formatted JSON document too.

pro7.9.openapi-spec.json

NETWORK LINK

For information on the ProPresenter Network Link protocol, see my other repo here:

https://github.com/jeffmikels/pro_presenter_network_link_tools

REVERSE-ENGINEERED STAGE DISPLAY & REMOTE DOCUMENTATION

Documenting RenewedVision's undocumented network protocols with examples

See below for changes to this repository:

For ProPresenter 6, go here: https://jeffmikels.github.io/ProPresenter-API/Pro6/

For ProPresenter 7, go here: https://jeffmikels.github.io/ProPresenter-API/Pro7/

For a Node Library implementing this protocol, go here: https://github.com/utopiantools/node-propresenter.git

or

npm install https://github.com/utopiantools/node-propresenter.git

For an example of a real app built with node.js that uses this API to turn ProPresenter into a universal remote control: https://github.com/jeffmikels/propresenter-watcher

For documentation regarding the new Pro7 file format: https://github.com/greyshirtguy/ProPresenter7-Proto

CHANGES

Recently, I have begun to migrate all the documentation into machine-readable formats so that as the Pro7 API improves, we will be able to more readily track the changes.

It is also my hope that this effort will inspire RenewedVision to join the documentation effort directly.

API METHODOLOGY

AsyncAPI is a great system for defining APIs and for generating code and documentation, but editing it by hand seemed cumbersome to me, so I built my own solution.

  1. I converted our former Markdown documentation files into a api.yaml format that is inspired by AsyncAPI, but is more easily edited.
  2. I wrote a Python script to automatically convert my api.yaml files into AsyncAPI 2.1.0 files.
  3. I use the AsyncAPI command line generator commands to render out html files.

API.YAML SPECIFICATIONS

The api.yaml file begins with a section called asyncapi. That section may contain anything an AsyncAPI 2.1.0 file may contain.

Then, there is a types section that holds defined data types similar to the way AsyncAPI does schemas. These will be translated into AsyncAPI schema nodes.

Types are structured as follows:

typename:
  type: |-
    can be a built-in type like

    `integer`, `string`, `number`, `list`, `list[othertype]`, or `object`

    or it can be another defined type or list[othertype]
  parameters:
    field_1:
      type: typename
    field_2: constantvalue
    field_3:
      type: typename
      options: [option1, option2, option3]
      description: "each field can have a description"
      examples: ["each field can have an example"]
  example:
    field_1: an arbitrary value
    field_2: constantvalue
    field_3: option1

Then, there is the channels section which defines the main application message endpoints. ProPresenter exposes two channels, /remote and /stagedisplay.

Each channel is structured as follows:

channels:
  channelname:
    summary: Simple name for this channel
    description: |
      Block markdown content describing this channel in detail
      actions: "list of actions, see below"

Each channel has a list of actions that can be sent or received.

Actions may contain a message and or response and are structured as follows (NOTE: payload and example follow the same structure as a type, and the example must match the payload structure):

actionName:
  summary: simple name for this action
  description: markdown text describing this action
  message:
    payload:
      action: actionName
      field_2: someConstantValue
      field_3:
        type: string
        options: ["1", "2", "3"]
        example: "2"
        description: textual description
    example:
  response:
    payload:
    example:

CONTRIBUTING

To contribute, please just edit the api.yaml file. I will regenerate the other documentation myself until I get Github actions working.