Send Command to RetroArch

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Searching the forum I found some old posts talking about sending commands to RetroArch via UDP:

[QUOTE=Maister;357]If you want to send commands in a more controlled manner to RetroArch, you can do so over UDP. Instead of forcing keypresses, you can try doing:

retroarch --command “QUIT” for example. Remember to enable UDP command processing in config (General -> Enable external command interface). If you’re on windows, I guess you need to disable the cmd.exe window popping up all the time, but :stuck_out_tongue: It also possible to just send a plain UDP packet to port 55355 if you have an easy way to do that.[/QUOTE]

I’d like to use this to allow my front-end application to do some basic things like close RetroArch and bring up the RetroArch menu. Before I start down this path, I wanted to confirm that this functionality is still present (I didn’t see anything more recent here or in the wiki) and if so, if there is an up to date list of commands that can be sent anywhere.

#2

AFAIK, the feature is still there but it hasn’t been touched since it was implemented and is essentially undocumented. You would have to dig through the source to learn anything about it, and I unfortunately don’t know where it would be found.

#3

Fair enough. Thanks.

#4

@banderson1311 I tried out the UDP network command method recently and it still works. Here is how I did it.

1 in retroarch.cfg add this line:

 network_cmd_enable = "true"

2 get the free command line tool sfk.exe from sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/swissfileknife/files/latest/download?source=files

3 send commands with this format

sfk.exe udpsend localhost 55355 "PAUSE_TOGGLE"

The list of available commands to send is here

#5

Thanks. That is very helpful.