React Native THEOplayer

The THEOplayerView Component

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

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

Configuration

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.

Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) configuration

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.

Chromeless vs. Chromefull

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.

Native UI language

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.

Setting a source

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"
    }
}

Seeking to a position in a stream

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

Text tracks and media tracks

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

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.

Buffering state changes

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.

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