lws-hls plugin

This plugin implements an Apple HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) server using libavformat. It dynamically builds an .m3u8 playlist for media files within a specified directory, and extracts/remuxes MPEG-TS segments on the fly without performing disk I/O.

Minimal Example

A minimal example server is provided at minimal-examples-lowlevel/http-server/minimal-http-server-hls. This standalone example demonstrates how to:

• Create an LWS vhost that explicitly loads protocol_lws_hls.
• Provide an overarching media-dir via the per-vhost options (PVO) mapping to expose local videos.
• Stream media files without transcoding.

To test the minimal server:

cd build/minimal-examples-lowlevel/http-server/minimal-http-server-hls
./lws-minimal-http-server-hls --media-dir /path/to/my/videos

Then visit http://localhost:7681 to view the directory listing.

lwsws configuration

If you are using the generic lwsws (lws web server) framework, you can configure the plugin on a vhost through your JSON configuration file (parsed by lejp). You must instantiate the protocol on the vhost, and also create two separate mounts in the URL space: one for static file serving of the player assets, and one using callback:// to route incoming HTTP requests to the protocol plugin callback.

Example JSON snippet (e.g. inside /etc/lwsws/conf.d/myvhost.json):

{
  "vhosts": [{
    "name": "localhost",
    "port": 7681,
    "ws-protocols": [{
      "lws-hls": {
        "status": "ok",
        "media-dir": "/var/lib/media"
      }
    }],
    "mounts": [
      {
        "mountpoint": "/media",
        "origin": "file:///usr/local/share/libwebsockets-test-server/hls/mount-origin",
        "default": "index.html"
      },
      {
        "mountpoint": "/media/hls",
        "origin": "callback://lws-hls"
      }
    ]
  }]
}

This attaches the lws-hls protocol to the vhost, maps the /media URL path to a standard file mount pointing to your player HTML assets, and creates a /media/hls callback mount bound to the lws-hls protocol callback. This ensures player files (like player.html and dir.css) are served statically, while dynamic playlist generator, thumbnail generator, and streaming requests are properly routed to the plugin.