OSCL-LXR linux-6.0.1/​Documentation/​input/​joydev/​joystick-api.rst	Source navigation Diff markup Identifier search General search
	Version: linux-6.0.1 spark-3.0.0 hadoop-3.2.0-src hadoop-3.3.0-src spark-2.4.7 linux-4.15.13 hadoop-2.7.4-src Revert   Change

 .. _joystick-api:
 
 =====================
 Programming Interface
 =====================
 
 :Author: Ragnar Hojland Espinosa <ragnar@macula.net> - 7 Aug 1998
 
 Introduction
 ============
 
 .. important::
    This document describes legacy ``js`` interface. Newer clients are
    encouraged to switch to the generic event (``evdev``) interface.
 
 The 1.0 driver uses a new, event based approach to the joystick driver.
 Instead of the user program polling for the joystick values, the joystick
 driver now reports only any changes of its state. See joystick-api.txt,
 joystick.h and jstest.c included in the joystick package for more
 information. The joystick device can be used in either blocking or
 nonblocking mode, and supports select() calls.
 
 For backward compatibility the old (v0.x) interface is still included.
 Any call to the joystick driver using the old interface will return values
 that are compatible to the old interface. This interface is still limited
 to 2 axes, and applications using it usually decode only 2 buttons, although
 the driver provides up to 32.
 
 Initialization
 ==============
 
 Open the joystick device following the usual semantics (that is, with open).
 Since the driver now reports events instead of polling for changes,
 immediately after the open it will issue a series of synthetic events
 (JS_EVENT_INIT) that you can read to obtain the initial state of the
 joystick.
 
 By default, the device is opened in blocking mode::
 
         int fd = open ("/dev/input/js0", O_RDONLY);
 
 
 Event Reading
 =============
 
 ::
 
         struct js_event e;
         read (fd, &e, sizeof(e));
 
 where js_event is defined as::
 
         struct js_event {
                 __u32 time;     /* event timestamp in milliseconds */
                 __s16 value;    /* value */
                 __u8 type;      /* event type */
                 __u8 number;    /* axis/button number */
         };
 
 If the read is successful, it will return sizeof(e), unless you wanted to read
 more than one event per read as described in section 3.1.
 
 
 js_event.type
 -------------
 
 The possible values of ``type`` are::
 
         #define JS_EVENT_BUTTON         0x01    /* button pressed/released */
         #define JS_EVENT_AXIS           0x02    /* joystick moved */
         #define JS_EVENT_INIT           0x80    /* initial state of device */
 
 As mentioned above, the driver will issue synthetic JS_EVENT_INIT ORed
 events on open. That is, if it's issuing an INIT BUTTON event, the
 current type value will be::
 
         int type = JS_EVENT_BUTTON | JS_EVENT_INIT;     /* 0x81 */
 
 If you choose not to differentiate between synthetic or real events
 you can turn off the JS_EVENT_INIT bits::
 
         type &= ~JS_EVENT_INIT;                         /* 0x01 */
 
 
 js_event.number
 ---------------
 
 The values of ``number`` correspond to the axis or button that
 generated the event. Note that they carry separate numeration (that
 is, you have both an axis 0 and a button 0). Generally,
 
         =============== =======
         Axis            number
         =============== =======
         1st Axis X      0
         1st Axis Y      1
         2nd Axis X      2
         2nd Axis Y      3
         ...and so on
         =============== =======
 
 Hats vary from one joystick type to another. Some can be moved in 8
 directions, some only in 4. The driver, however, always reports a hat as two
 independent axes, even if the hardware doesn't allow independent movement.
 
 
 js_event.value
 --------------
 
 For an axis, ``value`` is a signed integer between -32767 and +32767
 representing the position of the joystick along that axis. If you
 don't read a 0 when the joystick is ``dead``, or if it doesn't span the
 full range, you should recalibrate it (with, for example, jscal).
 
 For a button, ``value`` for a press button event is 1 and for a release
 button event is 0.
 
 Though this::
 
         if (js_event.type == JS_EVENT_BUTTON) {
                 buttons_state ^= (1 << js_event.number);
         }
 
 may work well if you handle JS_EVENT_INIT events separately,
 
 ::
 
         if ((js_event.type & ~JS_EVENT_INIT) == JS_EVENT_BUTTON) {
                 if (js_event.value)
                         buttons_state |= (1 << js_event.number);
                 else
                         buttons_state &= ~(1 << js_event.number);
         }
 
 is much safer since it can't lose sync with the driver. As you would
 have to write a separate handler for JS_EVENT_INIT events in the first
 snippet, this ends up being shorter.
 
 
 js_event.time
 -------------
 
 The time an event was generated is stored in ``js_event.time``. It's a time
 in milliseconds since ... well, since sometime in the past.  This eases the
 task of detecting double clicks, figuring out if movement of axis and button
 presses happened at the same time, and similar.
 
 
 Reading
 =======
 
 If you open the device in blocking mode, a read will block (that is,
 wait) forever until an event is generated and effectively read. There
 are two alternatives if you can't afford to wait forever (which is,
 admittedly, a long time;)
 
         a) use select to wait until there's data to be read on fd, or
            until it timeouts. There's a good example on the select(2)
            man page.
 
         b) open the device in non-blocking mode (O_NONBLOCK)
 
 
 O_NONBLOCK
 ----------
 
 If read returns -1 when reading in O_NONBLOCK mode, this isn't
 necessarily a "real" error (check errno(3)); it can just mean there
 are no events pending to be read on the driver queue. You should read
 all events on the queue (that is, until you get a -1).
 
 For example,
 
 ::
 
         while (1) {
                 while (read (fd, &e, sizeof(e)) > 0) {
                         process_event (e);
                 }
                 /* EAGAIN is returned when the queue is empty */
                 if (errno != EAGAIN) {
                         /* error */
                 }
                 /* do something interesting with processed events */
         }
 
 One reason for emptying the queue is that if it gets full you'll start
 missing events since the queue is finite, and older events will get
 overwritten.
 
 The other reason is that you want to know all that happened, and not
 delay the processing till later.
 
 Why can the queue get full? Because you don't empty the queue as
 mentioned, or because too much time elapses from one read to another
 and too many events to store in the queue get generated. Note that
 high system load may contribute to space those reads even more.
 
 If time between reads is enough to fill the queue and lose an event,
 the driver will switch to startup mode and next time you read it,
 synthetic events (JS_EVENT_INIT) will be generated to inform you of
 the actual state of the joystick.
 
 
 .. note::
 
  As of version 1.2.8, the queue is circular and able to hold 64
  events. You can increment this size bumping up JS_BUFF_SIZE in
  joystick.h and recompiling the driver.
 
 
 In the above code, you might as well want to read more than one event
 at a time using the typical read(2) functionality. For that, you would
 replace the read above with something like::
 
         struct js_event mybuffer[0xff];
         int i = read (fd, mybuffer, sizeof(mybuffer));
 
 In this case, read would return -1 if the queue was empty, or some
 other value in which the number of events read would be i /
 sizeof(js_event)  Again, if the buffer was full, it's a good idea to
 process the events and keep reading it until you empty the driver queue.
 
 
 IOCTLs
 ======
 
 The joystick driver defines the following ioctl(2) operations::
 
                                 /* function                     3rd arg  */
         #define JSIOCGAXES      /* get number of axes           char     */
         #define JSIOCGBUTTONS   /* get number of buttons        char     */
         #define JSIOCGVERSION   /* get driver version           int      */
         #define JSIOCGNAME(len) /* get identifier string        char     */
         #define JSIOCSCORR      /* set correction values        &js_corr */
         #define JSIOCGCORR      /* get correction values        &js_corr */
 
 For example, to read the number of axes::
 
         char number_of_axes;
         ioctl (fd, JSIOCGAXES, &number_of_axes);
 
 
 JSIOGCVERSION
 -------------
 
 JSIOGCVERSION is a good way to check in run-time whether the running
 driver is 1.0+ and supports the event interface. If it is not, the
 IOCTL will fail. For a compile-time decision, you can test the
 JS_VERSION symbol::
 
         #ifdef JS_VERSION
         #if JS_VERSION > 0xsomething
 
 
 JSIOCGNAME
 ----------
 
 JSIOCGNAME(len) allows you to get the name string of the joystick - the same
 as is being printed at boot time. The 'len' argument is the length of the
 buffer provided by the application asking for the name. It is used to avoid
 possible overrun should the name be too long::
 
         char name[128];
         if (ioctl(fd, JSIOCGNAME(sizeof(name)), name) < 0)
                 strscpy(name, "Unknown", sizeof(name));
         printf("Name: %s\n", name);
 
 
 JSIOC[SG]CORR
 -------------
 
 For usage on JSIOC[SG]CORR I suggest you to look into jscal.c  They are
 not needed in a normal program, only in joystick calibration software
 such as jscal or kcmjoy. These IOCTLs and data types aren't considered
 to be in the stable part of the API, and therefore may change without
 warning in following releases of the driver.
 
 Both JSIOCSCORR and JSIOCGCORR expect &js_corr to be able to hold
 information for all axes. That is, struct js_corr corr[MAX_AXIS];
 
 struct js_corr is defined as::
 
         struct js_corr {
                 __s32 coef[8];
                 __u16 prec;
                 __u16 type;
         };
 
 and ``type``::
 
         #define JS_CORR_NONE            0x00    /* returns raw values */
         #define JS_CORR_BROKEN          0x01    /* broken line */
 
 
 Backward compatibility
 ======================
 
 The 0.x joystick driver API is quite limited and its usage is deprecated.
 The driver offers backward compatibility, though. Here's a quick summary::
 
         struct JS_DATA_TYPE js;
         while (1) {
                 if (read (fd, &js, JS_RETURN) != JS_RETURN) {
                         /* error */
                 }
                 usleep (1000);
         }
 
 As you can figure out from the example, the read returns immediately,
 with the actual state of the joystick::
 
         struct JS_DATA_TYPE {
                 int buttons;    /* immediate button state */
                 int x;          /* immediate x axis value */
                 int y;          /* immediate y axis value */
         };
 
 and JS_RETURN is defined as::
 
         #define JS_RETURN       sizeof(struct JS_DATA_TYPE)
 
 To test the state of the buttons,
 
 ::
 
         first_button_state  = js.buttons & 1;
         second_button_state = js.buttons & 2;
 
 The axis values do not have a defined range in the original 0.x driver,
 except that the values are non-negative. The 1.2.8+ drivers use a
 fixed range for reporting the values, 1 being the minimum, 128 the
 center, and 255 maximum value.
 
 The v0.8.0.2 driver also had an interface for 'digital joysticks', (now
 called Multisystem joysticks in this driver), under /dev/djsX. This driver
 doesn't try to be compatible with that interface.
 
 
 Final Notes
 ===========
 
 ::
 
   ____/|        Comments, additions, and specially corrections are welcome.
   \ o.O|        Documentation valid for at least version 1.2.8 of the joystick
    =(_)=        driver and as usual, the ultimate source for documentation is
      U          to "Use The Source Luke" or, at your convenience, Vojtech ;)

This page was automatically generated by the 2.1.0 LXR engine. The LXR team