phpdlna

UPnP / DLNA server in PHP - use your existing web server as a DLNA media hub

Many UPnP / DLNA Media Servers (or Digital Media Server (DMS) in DLNA speach) have been written. As far as I have found, they all include a web server (and soap+xml framework)

If you already have a web server installed, and considering that UPnP is basically http with a tiny module doing UDP broadcasts for discovery, one might wonder why an additional http server is necessary.

With php-dlna, the answer is: It's not.

php-dlna provides a small udp client that takes care of the discovery (sending upnp notify and answering m-search requests). Everything is then directed to the php script on your existing web server.

Be aware that this is not a polished product that will automatically work out of the box. You'll probably need to compile some c-code (or run some python scripts) and change various files. You'll also need to install and configure the web server Apache (others might work, not tested) - That's kind of the point. If you don't already have a webserver, you'll be better of with PS3 media server, ReadyMedia or similar.

Features

• Basic UPnP / DLNA media sharing
• Title & icon supported out-of-box (various other meta data can be added easily)
• Stateless
• No database - all media files are read in place

Installing

Copy the files in phpdlna.git/web/* to a convenient location on your web server:

in phpdlna.git:

mkdir /var/www/phpdlna && cp -a web/* /var/www/phpdlna/

In phpdlna.git/tools:

cp config.h.src config.h

and edit config.h as appropriate. Usually the server_location string should be enough. It is suggested to use the IP address (host name might work, depending on your rendering device).

If you're going to use the C version of announce, you now need to compile it: g++ announce.cpp -o announce. The python version does not need compiling - and uses the same config.h for it's settings.

Further we'll need rootdesc.xml.

in /var/www/phpdlna/:

cp rootDesc.xml.src rootDesc.xml

and update URLBase to point to the root folder on your server. If you chose another location than phpdlna for installation, you'll also need to update the various *URL entries.

##Configuring media sources

The files to serve must be configured in /var/www/phpdlna/config.php. An example with is provided in config.php_example.

Additionally it is required that the web server will serve your files, as specified.

Further the web server needs to set the correct content-type headers for xml and the media you want to make available. You may use .htaccess files, or configure this in your global server configuration.

After testing that you can actually access your media files with a browser, curl or similar, say a few prayers and test from your renderer (WDTV, xbmc or others?)..

Oh, and before that will work - You'll need to start the announcer, and let it run:

phpdlna.git/tools/announce &

You can use the tools/validate.py to verify and debug the installation

python phpdlna.git/tools/validate.py

Ngnix support

phpdlna has been tested to work with nginx and php-fpm

example nginx.conf:

# this assumes phpdlna.git/web is installed in /var/www/phpdlna
server {
#other stuff like server_name and listen
root /var/www;

#types are typically includes in a global
#mime_types, but listed here are typical types
#needed for dlna
types {
    image/png           png;
    image/jpeg          jpeg jpg;
    audio/mpeg          mp3;
    video/mpeg          mpeg mpg;
    video/x-matroska    mkv;
    video/mp4           mp4;
    video/quicktime     mov;
    video/x-flv         flv;
    video/x-msvideo     avi;
    video/x-ms-wmv      wmv;
    text/xml    xml;
}

location / {
    try_files $uri =404;
}

location ~ /phpdlna/.*\.php$ {
    #the param is also globally defined somewhere (usually)
    fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME         $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}
}

##Misc

• Why?

  • Scratch that itch
  • Reduce the amount of server software to keep up to date.

• Transcoding

  Transcoding is currently not implemented. It should be fairly easy to have php-dlna call eg ffmpeg and do transcoding on the fly. It would be nice if it could do ConnectionManager request to the player for zero-user- interaction format negociation.

• annonce.cpp vs announce.py

  They do exactly the same thing. One can be compiled and run without dependencies.

• UDP discovery cache-control

  Some renderers will simply stop playing and disconnect if a notify is not received when the time expires.

• Same source ip

  Some renderers (notably wdtv live) will not accept that the web server and udp-broadcast lives on different addresses (location has to point to the same ip as the notify / m-search reply is sent from)

• Server strings

  Are specified in http://upnp.org/specs/arch/UPnP-arch-DeviceArchitecture-v1.1.pdf to "MUST include 'UPnP/M.m'. On most servers we can't control this. It seems most renderers don't care.

##Tested & verified ok with

• WDTV live
• PS3
• XBMC/Kodi 13.3, 15.2