"jblack199" wrote:
I've read and re-read the documentation several different times.. I've looked at all the examples... I just got the roku unit from work to take home so now I can try and figure out how to do this 'side-load' thing that is referenced here.. but since that's not in the PDF's either, that will be trial and error I suppose just like everything else associated with the roku
Either you have not read all of the documentation, or you have and you're being deliberately obtuse. Because side-loading is definitely referenced in the DeveloperGuide.pdf:
7.2 Application Installer Page
Development applications are loaded onto the device using a standard web browser. When enabled for development mode the device hosts a web page for installing your application. To access the installer page, do the following:
1. From your Roku Streaming Player, navigate to “Roku Player Settings”, “player info” to find the IP address of your box.
2. From your development workstation, open a standard web browser and type the following URL:
a. http://<rokuPlayer-ip-address> for example: http://192.168.1.100
3. You should see a page like the one displayed in Figure 1 (Application Install Page) below.
4. Click the “Browse” button and navigate to the location of the application zip file on your development machine as shown in Figure 2 (Application File Browser). The full path to the application .zip file should appear in the text field.
5. Finally, click the “Install” button to deploy the application to the box. The application should install and begin running immediately. You will see a message on the web page indicating it was successfully loaded as shown in Figure 3 (Application Installer page – Installation Complete)
6. Run the application with the application debug console open. When you telnet to the Roku Streaming Player on port 8085 (see section 8.1) you will see the debug console from your application. If there are any errors in your code, they will show up on this console. There is even a debugger attached to this port that will give you source file and line number information for script errors.
The Application Installer page only accepts applications using the zip file format. This process is often referred to as “side-loading” your application.
A simple search across all the pdfs in the documentation folder(Ctrl-Shift-F on Adobe Reader 10 for Windows) turned this up for me in ~5 seconds.
The same technique can be used for ro components:
For example, here's a part of the table of contents for the 3.0 beta sdk component reference:
4.2 roAppManager 26
4.3 roPosterScreen 34
4.4 roSpringboardScreen 43
4.5 roVideoScreen 51
4.6 roSlideShow 60
4.7 roSearchScreen 63
4.8 roSearchHistory 67
4.9 roParagraphScreen 68
4.10 roMessageDialog 71
4.11 roOneLineDialog 75
4.12 roCodeRegistrationScreen 76
4.13 roKeyboardScreen 80
4.14 roPinEntryDialog 83
4.15 roAudioPlayer 84
4.16 roMessagePort 88
4.17 roDeviceInfo 88
4.18 roDateTime 89
4.19 roEVPCipher 91
4.20 roEVPDigest 92
4.21 roHMAC 93
4.22 roTimespan 94
4.23 roRegistry 95
4.24 roRegistrySection 96
4.25 roUrlTransfer 97
5.0 Components First Introduced in Firmware v2.6 103
5.1 roImageCanvas 103
5.2 roFontRegistry 106
5.3 roFontMetrics 107
5.4 roSystemLog 108
5.5 roRegex 111
5.6 roPath 114
5.7 roFileSystem 114
5.8 roVideoPlayer 116
3 4/20/2011 © 2009 Roku Inc.
6.0 Components First Introduced in Firmware v2.7 120
6.1 roGridScreen 120
7.0 Components First Introduced in Firmware v2.9 127
7.1 roAudioMetadata 127
7.2 roImageMetadata 128
8.0 Components First Introduced in Firmware v3.0 132
8.1 roSocketAddress 132
8.2 roStreamSocket 132
8.3 roDataGramSocket
You found one extremely poor example of a component not available on a Roku, roGPIOPort, which was explained above as being a component only available in the BrightSign product, which uses the same language. This is definitely something that should be fixed in the documentation. There have been plenty of similarly
bad examples given in the php docs you've referred to as being an example of a 'good' reference. That doesn't make the rest of the documentation invalid or necessarily inadequate.
I'd also like to touch on your numerous 'idiot' comments. You're violating
forum policy by flaming(and/or trolling). Most of the people who've attempted to help you in this thread are published channel creators, and are earning income from their channels. Everyone here (with the exception, perhaps, of RokuMarkN) started from the same basic set of documentation and examples, and yet they managed to learn the language and interact with other people learning the language without resorting to insulting each other for not having the answers to their questions. Criticize the docs all you want, I agree whole-heartedly, they absolutely could be improved in multiple ways. But insulting the very people trying to help you is clearly a self-defeating way to go about things.
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