WebtroPie

kixut

Edit:

source
wiki

Auto detect if ES is running on your PI with prompt to close
Auto detect all your systems
List your games
Edit all your games metadata
Upload Media (Image, Marquee, Video) with file explorer or Drag'n drop. You can also configure your 3 default upload paths.
Auto resize your uploaded images (you can configure the two size)
Possible to Zoom the 3 MEDIA (to verify quality)
Scan your new games ROM (NEW:)
Show games in gamelist but without ROM (MISSING)
Scan if you have MEDIA with same ROM name to link them
Permit to delete games on gamelist and (or not) the ROM on hard drive
Permit to try your Skins faster than on PI, and help to make one by seeing what you do near real time.
Permit to filter games by METADATA and file MODIFIED date.
Permit to a friend to (restricted) access your Webtropie from web and help you to complete games informations.

Install Update Latest Stable Release

repo="https://github.com/gazpan/WebtroPie"
ver="$(curl -silent $repo/releases/latest | grep '^Location:' | sed 's|\r.*||; s|.*/||')"
wget -nc "$repo/archive/$ver.zip"
if [ ! -d "WebtroPie-$ver" ] ; then unzip "$ver.zip"; fi
cd "WebtroPie-$ver"
sudo ./INSTALL.sh

Install Development

git clone https://github.com/gazpan/WebtroPie
cd WebtroPie
sudo ./INSTALL.sh

Update Development

cd WebtroPie
git pull origin master
sudo ./INSTALL.sh

(original post)

Here is a look at a web interface for RetroPie that I've been working on

Sorry, it's long, maybe skip to the last minute!

I've quite a few things to do but thought it would be a good time to show what it is now and maybe get some ideas / feedback.

robertybob

I like the look of this! There have been a number of web apps now but not one seems to have been fully completed - I hope this one is :)

pjft

Wow.

I am extremely impressed and yet slightly confused :)

Is this a web app to manage the ROMs and data on the Pi? Is it a web app that can also control RetroPie (i.e. you can open games from the web - obviously, on your Pi)?

I assume it's the former, but all the similarities to ES - including a "Launch" button in the help bar - make me curious.

Looks great!

kixut

@pjft said in Web App WIP +please give it a name...:

I am extremely impressed and yet slightly confused :)
Is this a web app to manage the ROMs and data on the Pi? Is it a web app that can also control RetroPie (i.e. you can open games from the web - obviously, on your Pi)?
I assume it's the former, but all the similarities to ES - including a "Launch" button in the help bar - make me curious.
Looks great!

Yes, it's primary purpose is to manage the roms and game lists on the Pi, however since it is hosted on the Pi I can get it to do pretty much anything you could from the command line such as launching a game. I wanted it to look like ES because I think, if I were new to retropie and connected to it via a web interface then it's more like what I would expect to see ... a more familiar user experience, so less confusion (I hoped at least) and more intuitive because of the similarity. I was thinking of it as a companion to do script things that would be too tedious to write into the proper front end.

@robertybob - thanks, I hope so too!

pjft

@kixut wonderful!

A simple question from a UI standpoint: does it allow for multi/bulk selection and editing?

kixut

@pjft at the moment you can only edit one game metadata at a time, but I know what you mean, it would be good to select multiple games (which it can do now) and edit say the Genre ... sort of the way you can do with iTunes, come to think of it you can drag and drop media onto iTunes too and it manages the Library

Regarding the front end / launching confusion, last Christmas I took my Picade into work, and while someone wa playing an old game one or two others were asking me if I had this game or that system, looking back I can imagine that if there was a web interface they could have been browsing the library on their mobile phones...

Edit: I've had a little go at this (see vid), I think maybe I need to perhaps change the conflicting multiply selected fields with *, perhaps change the outline of the field that has been edited ... what do you think?

A Former User

kixut

@itsnitro .. sure, but on my Picade I would have to plug in a keyboard, and sometimes it's easier to be in an environment where you can just
cut and paste.

A Former User

Good point.
Also, I really like this new web app, it deletes the use of Putty and WinSCP with RetroPie. I'd call it WebtroPie. Cause it's on the web.

pjft

@kixut I like it, in concept seems functional. I don't think there's a need for the user to be able to interact with the background when the dialog is open, and perhaps a few options aren't valid for multiple selection ("Launch", for instance :) ), but other than that, it sounds promising.

Something that's used in UIs for multiple edits is to show the text for the fields that have the same value, whereas for fields that have different values just fill it with something stating that's <different values>, so that the user knows that on save, each of them will save the respective original values for each. Others opt to leave them blank.

Just a thought, it's not serious though.

What's this using for web server, by the way?

Thanks for all the work!

kixut

Yes, it reminds me a little of mp3tag and iTunes, I think maybe I should lose the checkbox idea and have a right click / edit on the selected list to put you in multi edit mode instead of a single click for normal single edit mode too.

The web server is apache, I could have used nodejs but I think that apache is likely to be already installed along with most systems so there shouldn't be any additional memory or resources used by having this available, everything static gets cached on the client so only the bare minimum data that needs to be transferred for return visits, most data traffic is game list data or game images that haven't previously been viewed on the client. It uses php for scripting and php gd library extension for tainting theme images in the same way that ES does ... it was too tricky to do that in pure css/filters.

mattrixk

@itsnitro said in Web App WIP +please give it a name...:

I'd call it WebtroPie

I like this.

meleu

@itsnitro said in Web App WIP +please give it a name...:

I'd call it WebtroPie.

impwessive

kixut

@itsnitro said in Web App WIP +please give it a name...:

I'd call it WebtroPie. Cause it's on the web.

yep, gweat, I'm weddy to go with that!

Sano

This is so impressive, so powerful, so beautiful...
I'd call it EmulationStallion !
Ok, I'm out.

meleu

@kixut said in Web App WIP +please give it a name...:

The web server is apache
It uses php for scripting

Maybe you could use the php builtin webserver, what you think?

When our mate @daeks started playing with his YARMan he used apache and the main RetroPie developer suggested the use of the php builtin webserver - "Apache seems a bit overkill". And then YARMan uses the php webserver successfully (unfortunatelly its development seems a little stuck).

kixut

Dammit!, I didn't see that thread!, thought all the others were dot net apps.

The builtin web server for php looks good and would solve a couple of other issues, I will do a little testing over the weekend but at first go performance seems good.

Edit: should have announced months ago :- https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6333/the-ideal-retropie/36 ... too much binge tv!

daeks

@kixut it would be great if someone could join me with development and to merge these two projects :) i know yarman is a bit stucked but I got some reallife issues but still want to work on it again very soon :) - anyhow, as already said in some other threads it is much better to develop "one" project instead of several ones.

I would really appreciate if we could work together and merge your frontend with mine. I used the wording "merge" as far as I have seen you are concentrating on the GUI for "playing" and basic edit functionallity (please correct me if I am wrong, didnt watch the whole video!) while mine is going more into detail with configs, logs, scraping, etc. It would be cool to integrate your work as some kind of mobile addon or something like that. Anyhow, I would appreciate also support in all the other planned features.

You could get an overview of all implemented and planned features here.

Looking forward to your response!

kixut

@daeks ... sounds great, I agree it's better to work as a team on one thing rather that sole developers of often to be abandoned projects.

Regarding what I've written - although I've probably gone over the top with the front end the prime purpose was to manage roms and game lists. I would have said the remaining milestones I was thinking of where I would consider it v1.0 would include :-

Scrape - normal
Scrape (mame roms) using history.dat
Search Screen
backup/restore game list

So, it's a little more modest managing rom sets rather than the whole sha-bang, but why not!, and there's certainly bits we've each done that the other wanted to do...

Having said that I think that although there's an overlap and mine uses php on the server our apps are probably constructed very differently, it might not be so straight forward to merge the two together, perhaps we would have to review each others framework and decide on a way forward.

I was close to posting it on GitHub, just a couple of things I wanted to add (ES still running warning, stop, start buttons and save all/bulk)... what the hell, does this forum allow zip gz attachments to posts?, or could i PM it to you (or anyone else who wants to test?)

meleu

@kixut said in Web App WIP +please give it a name...:

does this forum allow zip gz attachments to posts?

no

or could i PM it to you (or anyone else who wants to test?)

not in this forum. Unless someone post its email address.