Unofficial Python bindings for the Plex API. Our goal is to match all capabilities of the official Plex Web Client. A few of the many features we currently support are:
- Navigate local or remote shared libraries.
- Perform library actions such as scan, analyze, empty trash.
- Remote control and play media on connected clients.
- Listen in on all Plex Server notifications.
pip install plexapiDocumentation can be found at Read the Docs.
There are two types of authentication. If you are running on a separate network or using Plex Users you can log into MyPlex to get a PlexServer instance. An example of this is below. NOTE: Servername below is the name of the server (not the hostname and port). If logged into Plex Web you can see the server name in the top left above your available libraries.
from plexapi.myplex import MyPlexAccount
account = MyPlexAccount('<USERNAME>', '<PASSWORD>')
plex = account.resource('<SERVERNAME>').connect() # returns a PlexServer instanceIf you want to avoid logging into MyPlex and you already know your auth token string, you can use the PlexServer object directly as above, but passing in the baseurl and auth token directly.
from plexapi.server import PlexServer
baseurl = 'http://plexserver:32400'
token = '2ffLuB84dqLswk9skLos'
plex = PlexServer(baseurl, token)# Example 1: List all unwatched movies.
movies = plex.library.section('Movies')
for video in movies.search(unwatched=True):
print(video.title)# Example 2: Mark all Game of Thrones episodes watched.
plex.library.section('TV Shows').get('Game of Thrones').markWatched()# Example 3: List all clients connected to the Server.
for client in plex.clients():
print(client.title)# Example 4: Play the movie Cars on another client.
# Note: Client must be on same network as server.
cars = plex.library.section('Movies').get('Cars')
client = plex.client("Michael's iPhone")
client.playMedia(cars)# Example 5: List all content with the word 'Game' in the title.
for video in plex.search('Game'):
print('%s (%s)' % (video.title, video.TYPE))# Example 6: List all movies directed by the same person as Elephants Dream.
movies = plex.library.section('Movies')
die_hard = movies.get('Elephants Dream')
director = die_hard.directors[0]
for movie in movies.search(None, director=director):
print(movie.title)# Example 7: List files for the latest episode of The 100.
last_episode = plex.library.section('TV Shows').get('The 100').episodes()[-1]
for part in last_episode.iterParts():
print(part.file)# Example 8: Get a URL to stream a movie or show in another client
die_hard = plex.library.section('Movies').get('Elephants Dream')
print('Run running the following command to play in VLC:')
print('vlc "%s"' % die_hard.getStreamURL(videoResolution='800x600'))# Example 9: Get audio/video/all playlists
for playlist in plex.playlists():
print(playlist.title)In order to test the PlexAPI library you have to prepare a Plex Server instance with following libraries:
- Movies section (agent com.plexapp.agents.imdb) containing both movies:
- Sintel - https://durian.blender.org/
- Elephants Dream - https://orange.blender.org/
- Sita Sings the Blues - http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/
- Big Buck Bunny - https://peach.blender.org/
- TV Show section (agent com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb) containing the shows:
- Game of Thrones (Season 1 and 2)
- The 100 (Seasons 1 and 2)
- (or symlink the above movies with proper names)
- Music section (agent com.plexapp.agents.lastfm) containing the albums:
- Infinite State - Unmastered Impulses - https://github.com/kennethreitz/unmastered-impulses
- Broke For Free - Layers - http://freemusicarchive.org/music/broke_for_free/Layers/
- A Photos section (any agent) containing the photoalbums (photoalbum is just a folder on your disk):
- Cats
- Within Cats album you need to place 3 photos (cute cat photos, of course)
- Within Cats album you should place 3 more photoalbums (one of them should be named Cats in bed, names of others doesn't matter)
- Within Cats in bed you need to place 7 photos
- Within other 2 albums you should place 1 photo in each
Instead of manual creation of the library you could use a script tools/plex-boostraptest.py with appropriate arguments and add this new server to a shared user which username is defined in environment veriable SHARED_USERNAME. It uses official docker image to create a proper instance.
Also in order to run most of the tests you have to provide some environment variables:
- PLEXAPI_AUTH_SERVER_BASEURL containing an URL to your Plex instance, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:32400 (without trailing slash)
- PLEXAPI_AUTH_MYPLEX_USERNAME and PLEXAPI_AUTH_MYPLEX_PASSWORD with your MyPlex username and password accordingly
After this step you can run tests with following command:
py.test tests -rxXs --ignore=tests/test_sync.pySome of the tests in main test-suite require a shared user in your account (e.g. test_myplex_users, test_myplex_updateFriend, etc.), you need to provide a valid shared user's username to get them running you need to provide the username of the shared user as an environment variable SHARED_USERNAME. You can enable a Guest account and simply pass Guest as SHARED_USERNAME (or just create a user like plexapitest and play with it).
To be able to run tests over Mobile Sync api you have to some some more environment variables, to following values exactly:
- PLEXAPI_HEADER_PROVIDES='controller,sync-target'
- PLEXAPI_HEADER_PLATFORM=iOS
- PLEXAPI_HEADER_PLATFORM_VERSION=11.4.1
- PLEXAPI_HEADER_DEVICE=iPhone
And finally run the sync-related tests:
py.test tests/test_sync.py -rxXsWhy are you using camelCase and not following PEP8 guidelines?
This API reads XML documents provided by MyPlex and the Plex Server. We decided to conform to their style so that the API variable names directly match with the provided XML documents.
Why don't you offer feature XYZ?
This library is meant to be a wrapper around the XML pages the Plex server provides. If we are not providing an API that is offerered in the XML pages, please let us know! -- Adding additional features beyond that should be done outside the scope of this library.
What are some helpful links if trying to understand the raw Plex API?