Ports

A Mido port is an object that can send and/or receive messages.

You can open a port by calling one of the open methods, for example:

>>> inport = mido.open_input('SH-201')
>>> outport = mido.open_output('Integra-7')

Now you can receive messages on the input port and send messages on the output port:

>>> msg = inport.receive()
>>> outport.send(msg)

The message is copied by send(), so you can safely modify your original message without causing breakage in other parts of the system.

In this case, the ports are device ports, and are connected to some sort of (physical or virtual) MIDI device, but a port can be anything. For example, you can use a MultiPort to receive messages from multiple ports as if they were one:

from mido.ports import MultiPort

...
multi = MultiPort([inport1, inport2, inport3])
for msg in multi:
    print(msg)

This will receive messages from all ports and print them out. Another example is a socket port, which is a wrapper around a TCP/IP socket.

No matter how the port is implemented internally or what it does, it will look and behave like any other Mido port, so all kinds of ports can be used interchangeably.

Warning

Sending and receiving messages is thread safe. Opening and closing ports and listing port names are not.

Common

How to open a port depends on the port type. Device ports (PortMidi, RtMidi and others defined in backends) are opened with the open functions, for example:

port = mido.open_output()

Input and I/O ports (which support both input and output) are opened with open_input() and open_ioport() respectively. If you call these without a port name like above, you will get the - system specific - default port. You can override this by setting the MIDO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT etc. environment variables.

To get a list of available ports, you can do:

>>> mido.get_output_names()
['SH-201', 'Integra-7']

and then:

>>> port = mido.open_output('Integra-7')

There are corresponding functions for input and I/O ports.

To learn how to open other kinds of ports, see documentation of the relevant port type.

The port name is available in port.name.

To close a port, call:

port.close()

or use the with statement to have the port closed automatically:

with mido.open_input() as port:
    for message in port:
        do_something_with(message)

You can check if the port is closed with:

if port.closed:
    print("Yup, it's closed.")

If the port is already closed, calling close() will simply do nothing.

Output

Output ports basically only have one method:

outport.send(message)

This will send the message immediately. (Well, the port can choose to do whatever it wants with the message, but at least it’s sent from Mido’s point of view.)

There are also a couple of utility methods:

outport.reset()

This will send “all notes off” and “reset all controllers” on every channel. This is used to reset everything to the default state, for example after playing back a song or messing around with controllers.

If you pass autoreset=True to the constructor, reset() will be called when the port closes:

with mido.open_output('Integra-7') as outport:
    for msg in inport:
        outport.send(msg)
# reset() is called here

outport.close()  # or here

Sometimes notes hang because a note_off has not been sent. To (abruptly) stop all sounding notes, you can call:

outport.panic()

This will not reset controllers. Unlike reset(), the notes will not be turned off gracefully, but will stop immediately with no regard to decay time.

Input

To iterate over incoming messages:

for msg in port:
    print(msg)

This will iterate over messages as they arrive on the port until the port closes. (So far only socket ports actually close by themselves. This happens if the other end disconnects.)

You can also do non-blocking iteration:

for msg in port.iter_pending():
    print(msg)

This will iterate over all messages that have already arrived. It is typically used in main loops where you want to do something else while you wait for messages:

while True:
    for msg in port.iter_pending():
        print(msg)

    do_other_stuff()

In an event based system like a GUI where you don’t write the main loop you can install a handler that’s called periodically. Here’s an example for GTK:

def callback(self):
    for msg in self.inport:
        print(msg)

gobject.timeout_add_seconds(timeout, callback)

To get a bit more control you can receive messages one at a time:

msg = port.receive()

This will block until a message arrives. To get a message only if one is available, you can use poll():

msg = port.poll()

This will return None immediately if no message is available.

Deprecated since version 1.2: There used to be a pending() method which returned the number of pending messages.

It was removed for three reasons:

• with poll() and iter_pending() it is no longer necessary

• it was unreliable when multithreading and for some ports it doesn’t even make sense

• it made the internal method API confusing. _send() sends a message so _receive() should receive a message.

Callbacks

Instead of manually reading from the port you can install a callback function which will be called for every message that arrives.

Here’s a simple callback function:

def print_message(message):
    print(message)

To install the callback you can either pass it when you create the port or later by setting the callback attribute:

port = mido.open_input(callback=print_message)
port.callback = print_message
...
port.callback = another_function

Warning

Since the callback runs in a different thread you may need to use locks or other synchronization mechanisms to keep your main program and the callback from stepping on each other’s toes.

Calling receive(), __iter__(), or iter_pending() on a port with a callback will raise an exception:

ValueError: a callback is set for this port

To clear the callback:

port.callback = None

This will return the port to normal.

API

Todo

Add abstract code to describe these interfaces.

Common Methods and Attributes

close()

Closes the port. If the port is already closed this will simply do nothing.

name

Name of the port or None.

closed

True if the port is closed.

Output Port Methods

send(message)

Sends a message.

reset()

Sends “all notes off” and “reset all controllers” on all channels.

panic()

Sends “all sounds off” on all channels. This will abruptly end all sounding notes.

Input Port Methods

receive(block=True)

Receives a message. This will block until it returns a message. If block=False is passed it will instead return None if there is no message.

poll()

Returns a message, or None if there are no pending messages.

iter_pending()

Iterates through pending messages.

__iter__()

Iterates through messages as they arrive on the port until the port closes.

Socket Ports - MIDI over TCP/IP

About

Socket ports allows you to send MIDI messages over a computer network.

The protocol is a simple MIDI bytes stream over TCP.

Warning

It is not rtpmidi!

Caveats

The data is sent over an unencrypted channel. Also, the default server allows connections from any host and also accepts arbitrary sysex messages, which could allow anyone to for example overwrite patches on your synths (or worse). Use only on trusted networks.

If you need more security, you can build a custom server with a whitelist of clients allowed to connect.

If timing is critical, latency and jitter (especially on wireless networks) may make socket ports unusable.

Sending Messages to a Server

First, let’s import some things:

from mido.sockets import PortServer, connect

After that, a simple server is only two lines:

for message in PortServer('localhost', 8080):
    print(message)

You can then connect to the server and send it messages:

output = connect('localhost', 8080):
output.send(message)

Each end of the connection behaves like a normal Mido I/O port, with all the usual methods.

The host may be an host name or IP address (as a string). It may also be ‘’, in which case connections are accepted from any IP address on the computer.

Todo

Test and clarify “Any IP address on the computer”. Does this mean only local adresses can connect or that any connection from any network is allowed?

Turning Things on their Head

If you want the server to send messages the client, you can instead do:

server = PortServer('localhost', 8080):
while True:
    server.send(message)
    ...

and then on the client side:

for message in connect('localhost', 8080):
    print(message)

The client will now print any message that the server sends. Each message that the server sends will be received by all connected clients.

Under the Hood

The examples above use the server and client ports as normal Mido I/O ports. This makes it easy to write simple servers, but you don’t have any control on connections and the way messages are sent and received.

To get more control,you can ignore all the other methods of the PortServer object and use only accept(). Here’s a simple server implemented this way:

with PortServer('localhost', 8080) as server:
    while True:
        client = server.accept()
        for message in client:
            print(message)

accept() waits for a client to connect, and returns a SocketPort object which is connected to the SocketPort object returned by connect() on the other end.

The server above has one weakness: it only allows one connection at a time. You can get around this by using accept(block=False). This will return a SocketPort if there’s a connection waiting and None if there is connection yet.

Todo

Clarify “Connection waiting” vs “There is a connection yet”.

Using this you can write the server any way you like, for example:

with PortServer('localhost', 8080) as server:
    clients = []
    while True:
        # Handle connections.
        client = server.accept(block=False)
        if client:
            print('Connection from {}'.format(client.name))
            clients.append(client)

        for i, client in reversed(enumerate(clients)):
            if client.closed:
                print('{} disconnected'.format(client.name))
                del clients[i]

        # Receive messages.
        for client in clients:
            for message in client.iter_pending()
                print('Received {} from {}'.format(message, client))

        # Do other things
        ...

Possible Future Additions

Optional HTTP-style headers could be added. As long as these are 7-bit ASCII, they will be counted as data bytes and ignored by clients or servers who don’t expect them.

Writing a New or Custom Port

The Mido port API allows you to write new ports to do practically anything.

A new port type can be defined by subclassing one of the base classes and overriding one or more methods. Here’s an example:

from mido.ports import BaseOutput

class PrintPort(BaseOutput):
    def _send(message):
        print(message)

>>> port = PrintPort()
>>> port.send(msg)
note_on channel=0 note=0 velocity=64 time=0

_send() will be called by send(), and is responsible for actually sending the message somewhere (or in this case print it out).

Overridable Methods

There are four overridable methods (all of them default to doing nothing):

``_open(self, **kwargs)``

Should do whatever is necessary to initialize the port (for example opening a MIDI device.)

Called by __init__(). The name attribute is already set when _open() is called, but you will get the rest of the keyword arguments.

If your port takes a different set of arguments or has other special needs, you can override __init__() instead.

_close(self)

Should clean up whatever resources the port has allocated (such as closing a MIDI device).

Called by close() if the port is not already closed.

_send(self, message)

(Output ports only.)

Should send the message (or do whatever else that makes sense).

Called by send() if the port is open and the message is a Mido message. (You don’t need any type checking here.)

Raise IOError if something goes wrong.

_receive(self, block=True)

(Input ports only.)

Should return a message if there is one available.

If block=True it should block until a message is available and then return it.

If block=False it should return a message or None if there is no message yet. If you return None the enclosing pending() method will check self._messages and return one from there.

Note

Prior to 1.2.0 ``_receive() would put messages in self._messages (usually via the parser) and rely on receive() to return them to the user.

Since this was not thread safe the API was changed in 1.2.0 to allow the _receive() to return a message. The old behavior is still supported, so old code will work as before.

Raise IOError if something goes wrong.

Each method corresponds to the public method of the same name, and will be called by that method. The outer method will take care of many things, so the inner method only needs to do the very minimum. The outer method also provides the doc string, so you don’t have to worry about that.

The base classes are BaseInput, BaseOutput and BaseIOPort (which is a subclass of the other two.)

Locking

The calls to _receive() and _send() will are protected by a lock, left.lock. As a result all send and receive will be thread safe.

Note

If your _receive() function actually blocks instead of letting the parent class handle it poll() will not work. The two functions are protected by the same lock, so when receive() blocks it will also block other threads calling poll(). In this case you need to implement your own locking.

If you want to implement your own thread safety you can set the _locking attribute in your class:

class MyInput(ports.BaseInput):
    _locking = False

    ...

An example of this is mido.backends.rtmidi where the callback is used to feed an internal queue that receive() reads from.

Examples

An full example of a device port for the imaginary MIDI library fjopp:

import fjopp
from mido.ports import BaseIOPort

# This defines an I/O port.
class FjoppPort(BaseIOPort):
    def _open(self, **kwargs):
    self._device = fjopp.open_device(self.name)

def _close(self):
        self._device.close()

    def _send(self, message):
        self.device.write(message.bytes())

    def _receive(self, block=True):
        while True:
        data = self.device.read()
        if data:
            self._parser.feed(data)
            else:
                return

If fjopp supports blocking read, you can do this to actually block on the device instead of letting receive() and friends poll and wait for you:

def _receive(self, block=True):
    if block:
        # Actually block on the device.
    # (``read_blocking()`` will always return some data.)
    while not ``self._messages``:
        data = self._device.read_blocking()
    self._parser.feed(data)
    else:
    # Non-blocking read like above.
        while True:
        data = self.device.read()
    if data:
         self._parser.feed(data)

This can be used for any kind of port that wants to block on a pipe, an socket or another input source. Note that Mido will still use polling and waiting when receiving from multiple ports (for example in a MultiPort).

If you want separate input and output classes, but the _open() and _close() methods have a lot in common, you can implement this using a mix-in.

Sometimes it’s useful to know inside the methods whether the port supports input or output. The way to do this is to check for the methods `send() and receive(), for example:

def _open(self, **kwargs):
    if hasattr(self, 'send'):
    # This is an output port.

    if hasattr(self, 'receive'):
        # This is an input port.

    if hasattr(self, 'send') and hasattr(self, 'receive'):
        # This is an I/O port.

Attributes

A port has some attributes that can be useful inside your methods.

name

The name of the port. The value is device specific and does not have to be unique. It can have any value, but must be a string or None.

This is set by __init__().

closed

True if the port is closed. You don’t have to worry about this inside your methods.

_messages

This is a collections.deque of messages that have been read and are ready to be received. This is a shortcut to _parser.messages.

_device_type (Optional.)

If this attribute exists, it’s a string which will be used in __repr__(). If it doesn’t exist, the class name will be used instead.