plyr/readme.md

26 KiB

Plyr

A simple, accessible and customizable HTML5, YouTube and Vimeo media player.

Checkout the demo

Image of Plyr

Why?

We wanted a lightweight, accessible and customizable media player that just supports modern browsers. Sure, there are many other players out there but we wanted to keep things simple, using the right elements for the job.

Features

  • Accessible - full support for VTT captions and screen readers.
  • Lightweight - just 8KB minified and gzipped.
  • Customisable - make the player look how you want with the markup you want.
  • Semantic - uses the right elements. <input type="range"> for volume and <progress> for progress and well, <button>s for buttons. There's no <span> or <a href="#"> button hacks.
  • Responsive - as you'd expect these days.
  • Audio & Video - support for both formats.
  • Embedded Video - support for YouTube and Vimeo (beta).
  • API - toggle playback, volume, seeking, and more.
  • Fullscreen - supports native fullscreen with fallback to "full window" modes.
  • i18n support - support for internationalization of controls.
  • No dependencies - written in vanilla JavaScript, no jQuery required.

Oh and yes, it works with Bootstrap.

Changelog

Check out the changelog to see what's been new with Plyr.

Planned Development

  • Playback speed
  • Playlists
  • Multiple language captions (with selection)
  • Audio captions ... and whatever else has been raised in issues

If you have any cool ideas or features, please let me know by creating an issue or, of course, forking and sending a pull request.

Implementation

Check docs/index.html and docs/dist/docs.js for an example setup.

Heads up: the example index.html file needs to be served from a webserver (such as Apache, Nginx, IIS or similar) unless you change the file sources to include http or https. e.g. change //cdn.plyr.io/1.5.1/plyr.js to https://cdn.plyr.io/1.5.1/plyr.js

Bower

If bower is your thang, you can grab Plyr using:

bower install plyr

More info on setting up dependencies can be found in the Bower Docs

Ember

The awesome @louisrudner has created an ember component, available by running:

ember addon:install ember-cli-plyr

More info is on npm and GitHub

CDN

If you want to use our CDN, you can use the following:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.plyr.io/1.5.1/plyr.css">
<script src="https://cdn.plyr.io/1.5.1/plyr.js"></script>

You can also access the sprite.svg file at https://cdn.plyr.io/1.5.1/sprite.svg.

CSS & Styling

If you want to use the default css, add the plyr.css file from /dist into your head, or even better use plyr.less or plyr.sass file included in /src in your build to save a request.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/plyr.css">

The default setup uses the BEM methodology with plyr as the block, e.g. .plyr__controls. You can change the class hooks in the options. Check out the source for more on this.

SVG

The SVG sprite for the controls icons is loaded in by AJAX to help with performance. This is best added before the closing </body>, before any other scripts.

<script>
(function(d, p){
	var a = new XMLHttpRequest(),
		b = d.body;
	a.open('GET', p, true);
	a.send();
	a.onload = function() {
		var c = d.createElement('div');
		c.setAttribute('hidden', '');
		c.innerHTML = a.responseText;
		b.insertBefore(c, b.childNodes[0]);
	};
})(document, 'path/to/sprite.svg');
</script>

If you're using the <base> tag on your site, you may need to use something like this: https://gist.github.com/leonderijke/c5cf7c5b2e424c0061d2

More info on SVG sprites here: http://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/ and the AJAX technique here: http://css-tricks.com/ajaxing-svg-sprite/

HTML

The only extra markup that's needed to use plyr is a <div> wrapper. Replace the source, poster and captions with urls for your media.

<div class="plyr">
	<video poster="/path/to/poster.jpg" controls>
		<!-- Video files -->
		<source src="/path/to/video.mp4" type="video/mp4">
		<source src="/path/to/video.webm" type="video/webm">

		<!-- Text track file -->
		<track kind="captions" label="English captions" src="/path/to/captions.vtt" srclang="en" default>

		<!-- Fallback for browsers that don't support the <video> element -->
		<a href="/path/to/movie.mp4">Download</a>
	</video>
</div>

And the same for <audio>

<div class="plyr">
	<audio controls>
		<!-- Audio files -->
		<source src="/path/to/audio.mp3" type="audio/mp3">
		<source src="/path/to/audio.ogg" type="audio/ogg">

		<!-- Fallback for browsers that don't support the <audio> element -->
		<a href="/path/to/audio.mp3">Download</a>
	</audio>
</div>

For YouTube, Plyr uses the standard YouTube API markup (an empty <div>):

<div class="plyr">
	<div data-video-id="L1h9xxCU20g" data-type="youtube"></div>
</div>

Cross Origin (CORS)

You'll notice the crossorigin attribute on the example <video> and <audio> elements. This is because the media is loaded from another domain. If your media is hosted on another domain, you may need to add this attribute.

More info on CORS here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Access_control_CORS

JavaScript

Quick setup

Here's an example of a default setup:

<script src="https://cdn.plyr.io/1.5.1/plyr.js"></script>
<script>plyr.setup();</script>

This will look for all elements with the specified container classname (default is plyr) and setup plyr on each element found. You can specify other options, including a different selector hook below. The container classname will be added to the specified element(s) if it is not already present (for the CSS).

You can initialize the player a few other ways:

Passing a NodeList:

plyr.setup(document.querySelectorAll('.js-plyr'), options);

Passing a HTMLElement:

plyr.setup(document.querySelector('.js-plyr'), options);

Passing a string selector:

plyr.setup('.js-plyr', options);

Passing just the options object:

plyr.setup(options);

Options

Options must be passed as an object to the setup() method as above.

Option Type Default Description
enabled Boolean true Completely disable Plyr. This would allow you to do a User Agent check or similar to programmatically enable or disable Plyr for a certain UA. Example below.
html String See controls.md See controls.md for more info on how the html needs to be structured.
controls Array ["restart", "rewind", "play", "fast-forward", "current-time", "duration", "mute", "volume", "captions", "fullscreen"] Toggle which control elements you would like to display when using the default controls html. If you specify a html option, this is redundant. The default value is to display everything.
i18n Object See controls.md Used for internationalization (i18n) of the tooltips/labels within the buttons.
iconPrefix String icon Specify the id prefix for the icons used in the default controls (e.g. "icon-play" would be "icon"). This is to prevent clashes if you're using your own SVG defs file but with the default controls. Most people can ignore this option.
debug Boolean false Display debugging information on what Plyr is doing.
seekTime Number 10 The time, in seconds, to seek when a user hits fast forward or rewind.
volume Number 5 A number, between 1 and 10, representing the initial volume of the player.
click Boolean true Click (or tap) will toggle pause/play of a <video>.
tooltips Boolean false Display control labels as tooltips on :hover & :focus (by default, the labels are screen reader only).
displayDuration Boolean true Displays the duration of the media on the "metadataloaded" event (on startup) in the current time display. This will only work if the `preload` attribute is not set to `none` (or is not set at all) and you choose not to display the duration (see controls option).
selectors Object See plyr.js in /src for more info. You probably don't need to change any of these.
handlers Object Allows early binding of handlers to Plyr's controls. See controls above for list of controls and see plyr.js in /src for more info.
classes Object Similar to above, these are the classes added to the player when state changes occur.
captions Object One property defaultActive which toggles if captions should be on by default. The default value is false.
fullscreen Object See below
storage Object Two properties; enabled which toggles if local storage should be enabled (if the browser supports it). The default value is `true`. This enables storing user settings, currently it only stores volume but more will be added later. The second property key is the key used for the local storage. The default is plyr_volume until more settings are stored.
onSetup Function This callback function is called on every new plyr instance created. The context (this) is the plyr instance itself.

Fullscreen options

Option Type Default Description
enabled Boolean true Toggles if fullscreen should be enabled (if the browser supports it).
fallback Boolean true Enable a full viewport view for older browsers.
hideControls Boolean true Hide the controls when fullscreen is active and the video is playing, after 1s. The controls reappear on hover of the progress bar (mouse), focusing a child control or pausing the video (by tap/click of video if `click` is `true`).
allowAudio Boolean false Allow audio play to toggle fullscreen. This will be more useful later when posters are supported.

API

Fetching the plyr instance

A plyr object is added to any element that Plyr is initialized on. You can then control the player by accessing methods in the plyr object.

There are two ways to access the instance, firstly you re-query the element container you used for setup (e.g. .js-plyr) like so:

var player = document.querySelector('.js-plyr');

Or you can use the returned object from your call to the setup method:

var player = plyr.setup('.js-plyr')[0];

This will return an array of plyr instances setup, so you need to specify the index of the instance you want. This is less useful if you are setting up mutliple instances. You can also use the onSetup callback documented below which will return each instance one by one, as they are setup.

Once you have your instance, you can use the API methods below on it. For example to pause it:

player.pause();

Here's a list of the methods supported:

Method Parameters Description
play() Plays the media
pause() Pauses the media
restart() Restarts playback
rewind(...) Number Rewinds by the provided parameter, in seconds. If no parameter is provided, the default seekInterval is used (10 seconds).
forward(...) Number Fast forwards by the provided parameter, in seconds. If no parameter is provided, the default seekInterval is used (10 seconds).
seek(...) Number Seeks the media to the provided parameter, time in seconds.
setVolume(...) Number Sets the player volume to the provided parameter. The value should be between 0 (muted) and 10 (loudest). If no parameter is provided, the default volume is used (5). Values over 10 are ignored.
togglePlay() Boolean Toggles playback for the player based on either the boolean argument or it's current state.
toggleMute() Toggles mute for the player.
toggleCaptions() Toggles whether captions are enabled.
toggleFullscreen() Event Toggles fullscreen. This can only be initiated by a user gesture due to browser security, i.e. a user event such as click.
isFullscreen() Boolean returned if the player is in fullscreen.
support(...) String Determine if a player supports a certain MIME type. This is not supported for embedded content (YouTube).
source(...) Array or undefined Get/Set the media source.

string
.source("/path/to/video.mp4")
This will set the src attribute on the video or audio element.

array
.source([{ src: "/path/to/video.webm", type: "video/webm", ...more attributes... }, { src: "/path/to/video.mp4", type: "video/mp4", ...more attributes... }])`
This will inject a child `source` element for every element in the array with the specified attributes. `src` is the only required attribute although adding `type` is recommended as it helps the browser decide which file to download and play.

YouTube
Currently this API method only accepts a YouTube ID when used with a YouTube player. I will add URL support soon, along with being able to swap between types (e.g. YouTube to Audio or Video and vice versa.)

undefined
Returns the current media source url. Works for both native videos and embeds.
poster(...) String Set the poster url. This is supported for the video element only.
destroy() Destroys the plyr UI and any media event listeners, effectively restoring to the previous state before setup() was called.
restore() Reverses the effects of the destroy() method, restoring the UI and listeners.

.source() method

This allows changing the plyr source and type on the fly.

Video example:

player.source({
  type:       'video',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
      src:    '/path/to/movie.mp4',
      type:   'video/mp4'
  },
  {
      src:    '/path/to/movie.webm',
      type:   'video/webm'
  }],
  poster:     '/path/to/poster.jpg',
  tracks:     [{
      kind:   'captions',
      label:  'English',
      srclang:'en',
      src:    '/path/to/captions.vtt',
      default: true
  }]
});

Audio example:

player.source({
  type:       'audio',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
    src:      '/path/to/audio.mp3',
    type:     'audio/mp3'
  },
  {
    src:      '/path/to/audio.ogg',
    type:     'audio/ogg'
  }]
});

YouTube example:

player.source({
  type:       'video',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
      src:    'bTqVqk7FSmY',
      type:   'youtube'
  }]
});

Vimeo example

player.source({
  type:       'video',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
      src:    '143418951',
      type:   'vimeo'
  }]
});

Some more details on the object parameters

Key Type Description
type String Options are video, audio, youtube and vimeo
title String Title of the new media. Used for the aria labelling.
sources Array or String This is an array of sources or optionally a string for embedded players (YouTube and Vimeo). `type` is also optional for YouTube and Vimeo when specifying an array. For YouTube and Vimeo media, only the video ID must be passed as the source as shown above. The keys of this object are mapped directly to HTML attributes so more can be added to the object if required.
poster String URL for the poster image (video only).
tracks Array An array of track objects. Each element in the array is mapped directly to a track element and any keys mapped directly to HTML attributes so as in the example above, it will render as ``. Booleans are converted to HTML5 value-less attributes.

Events/Callbacks

The plyr object on the player element also contains a media property which is a reference to the <audio> or <video> element within the player which you can use to listen for events. Here's an example:

var media = document.querySelector(".js-plyr").plyr.media;

media.addEventListener("playing", function() {
  console.log("playing");
});

A complete list of events can be found here: Media Events - W3.org

Embeds

Currently only YouTube is supported. Vimeo will be coming soon. Some HTML5 media events are triggered on the media property of the plyr object:

  • play
  • pause
  • timeupdate
  • progress

Due to the way the YouTube API works, the timeupdate and progress events are triggered by polling every 200ms so the event may trigger without an actual value change. Buffering progress is media.buffered in the plyr object. It is a a number between 0 and 1 that specifies the percentage of the video that the player shows as buffered.

document.querySelector(".js-plyr").plyr.media.addEventListener("play", function() {
	console.log("play");
});

The .source() API method can also be used but the video id must be passed as the argument.

Currently caption control is not supported but I will work on this.

Fullscreen

Fullscreen in Plyr is supported for all browsers that currently support it. If you're using the default CSS, you can also use a "full browser" mode which will use the full browser window by adding the plyr-fullscreen class to your container.

Browser support

Safari Firefox Chrome Opera IE9 IE10+
✔¹ API² ✔³

¹ Mobile Safari on the iPhone forces the native player for <video> so no useful customisation is possible. <audio> elements have volume controls disabled.

² Native player used (no support for <progress> or <input type="range">) but the API is supported (v1.0.28+)

³ IE10 has no native fullscreen support, fallback can be used (see options)

The enabled option can be used to disable certain User Agents. For example, if you don't want to use Plyr for smartphones, you could use:

enabled: /Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry/i.test(navigator.userAgent)

If a User Agent is disabled but supports <video> and <audio> natively, it will use the native player.

Any unsupported browsers will display links to download the media if the correct html is used.

Checking for support

There's an API method for checking support. You can call plyr.supported() and optionally pass a type to it, e.g. plyr.supported("video"). It will return an object with two keys; basic meaning there's basic support for that media type (or both if no type is passed) and full meaning there's full support for plyr.

Issues

If you find anything weird with Plyr, please let us know using the GitHub issues tracker.

Author

Plyr is developed by @sam_potts / sampotts.me with help from the awesome contributors

Mentions

Used by

Let me know on Twitter I can add you to the above list. It'd be awesome to see how you're using Plyr :-)

Credit to the PayPal HTML5 Video player from which Plyr's caption functionality is ported from:

Also these links helped created Plyr:

The MIT license.