Consuming the Windows MIDI Services API
The Windows MIDI Services API is built using C++/WinRT. WinRT, a requirement for modern APIs on Windows, enables desktop applications, regardless of language, to be able to use APIs, SDKs, etc. that we create. The older tools, C++/CX, are arguably simpler to implement in, but because they include proprietary extensions to C++, we decided to go with standards-based C++/WinRT instead.
Prerequisites
To use the API, your application language and tools must be able to work with WinRT metadata and libraries, or the generated projection header file.
- Visual Studio 2022+ if you are using Visual Studio
- Windows SDK 10.0.20348 (Install with Visual Studio)
- Windows 10 22H2, or preferably, the latest version of Windows 11. Our development machines are all running Windows 11.
- C++ 17 (C++ 20 may work, C++ 14 will not)
- The NuGet package(s) from the release
There are somewhat hacky ways to get traditional C to work with the COM interfaces, but it is a ton of work for you, and is not a scenario we support. If you find yourself in that situation, I recommend factoring out the MIDI code into its own lib and encapsulating all the C++ calls in there.
NOTE: In the period of time before Windows MIDI Services ships in Windows, you will also need to run the latest Windows 11 Insider Canary build of Windows in order to be able to use the USB MIDI 2.0 driver. Click here to learn more and join the Windows Insider Program.
CPU Architecture: There is no planned support for Arm(32) or x86. We only support 64 bit applications.
Consuming from C++ with Visual Studio
Add the C++/WinRT Nuget package to your C++ project in Visual Studio. This installs the required tools and build process. See the C++/WinRT FAQ link below for using LLVM/Clang. Note that the Windows MIDI Services team does not provide any support for LLVM/Clang, but we will take PRs as required if we need to change something reasonable to ensure you are successful with those tools, within what C++/WinRT can support.
In your project, set your target and minimum SDK versions to 10.0.20348.0
Download the NuGet package for the Core SDK
- Until this is in the in-box SDK, you’ll need to set up a local NuGet package repository. This is easy to do inside the NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio – you simply point to a folder. The structure I use in the local clone of the repo is a subfolder of the release folder for all NuGet packages. Specifically
G:\GitHub\microsoft\midi\build\release\NuGet\on my Dev Drive.
If needed, modify the project file as required (info in the C++/WinRT docs, and you can also look at the sample application code). If you are not using Visual Studio as your toolchain for your project, you may want to pull out the MIDI code into a library in your project which does. It’s not strictly required, but it’s much easier to use C++/WinRT. (If you do not want to do this, you’ll need to manually set up the cppwinrt tools as part of your build process to generate the required Windows.Devices.Midi2.h projection header. After that, you can develop using your normal flow.).
Read through this page, specifically the “If the API is implemented in a Windows Runtime component”.
After that, you reference the types as you would anything else in C++. Only the toolchain is an extra step. What it produces is standard C++. We’re considering what we can do here to possibly eliminate even that step in the future, but it’s required for now.
When in doubt, REbuild your project. C++/WinRT does a lot of code generation for the projections.
- C++ Windows MIDI Services Example Code
- Introduction to C++/WinRT
- C++/WinRT on GitHub
- C++/WinRT FAQ
- C++/WinRT Troubleshooting
Consuming from C# Desktop App
Your project will currently need to target .NET 7 or above. We prefer .NET 8.
Releases will eventually be in the official NuGet.org package source. For now, you can create a local package source and place the NuGet package in there. Then add it to your package sources in the NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio.
The package contains the .NET (C#) projection for .NET 7 and .NET 8. You will still need to install the C#/WinRT NuGet package in your project because we use other Windows SDK types from Windows.Foundation and more.
Note that other .NET languages (like Visual Basic) may work, but have not been tested.
Consuming from C# UWP
Support for this is not yet in place. We are evaluating the need for UWP support. Our top priority is desktop application support.
Consuming from Rust / RS WinRT
You will follow a similar approach to C++ using windows-rs instead of C++/WinRT. Note that the Rust WinRT tools are newer and are still in active development. Supporting non-Windows SDK winmd files is or will be supported, but is not intuitive at the moment. There is no existing crate for Windows MIDI Services right now.
- Getting Started with windows-rs
- Rust for Windows and the windows crate
- Set up your Rust Development Environment
- windows-rs on GitHub
Consuming from C++ without Visual Studio (using cmake or other tools)
The C++/WinRT tool cppwinrt.exe will generate a set of standard C++ header files including Microsoft.Windows.Devices.Midi2.h which you can pull in and include in your project. The header file projections for WinRT types outside of Microsoft::Windows::Devices::Midi2 are generated from the Windows SDK and included in a subfolder. When we ship Windows MIDI Services in-box in Windows, this new MIDI API will be projected in the same way as all the others in the Windows SDK.
First, install the latest Windows SDK. You can get the SDK from the Windows Dev Center
The SDK install includes the cppwinrt.exe tool. For the 10.0.22621.0 version of the SDK, it is found here on my PC: C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.22621.0\x64 and C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.22621.0\arm64 . Pick the version appropriate for your development PC architecture.
Normally, all SDK header files, on my PC with the 10.0.22621.0 version of the SDK installed, are located here C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Include\10.0.22621.0\cppwinrt\winrt
Generating the Projection Headers
The tool produces the header files from from the .winmd file. This file can be found with the developer release of Windows MIDI Services either as a separate download in the release, or by opening the NuGet package (it’s just a zip file) and pulling it from there. The .winmd file is just metadata about the implementation dll.
NOTE: The Windows SDK Includes a version of cppwinrt.exe, but it is older. To generate compatible projections with the latest bug fixes, you want the version that is included in the C++/WinRT NuGet package.
C:\demos\cppwinrt>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0AEC-1038
Directory of C:\demos\cppwinrt
11/09/2023 02:21 PM <DIR> .
11/09/2023 02:20 PM <DIR> ..
11/06/2023 08:48 PM 55,808 Windows.Devices.Midi2.winmd
1 File(s) 55,808 bytes
2 Dir(s) 32,987,725,824 bytes free
C:\demos\cppwinrt>
C:\demos\cppwinrt>set cppwinrt="path_to_downloaded_nuget_cppwinrt_exe\cppwinrt.exe"
C:\demos\cppwinrt>%cppwinrt% -input Windows.Devices.Midi2.winmd -reference 10.0.20348.0+ -output .\projection
C:\demos\cppwinrt>dir /s
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0AEC-1038
Directory of C:\demos\cppwinrt
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> .
11/09/2023 02:20 PM <DIR> ..
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> projection
11/06/2023 08:48 PM 55,808 Windows.Devices.Midi2.winmd
1 File(s) 55,808 bytes
Directory of C:\demos\cppwinrt\projection
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> .
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> ..
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> winrt
0 File(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\demos\cppwinrt\projection\winrt
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> .
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> ..
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> impl
11/09/2023 02:26 PM 349,214 Windows.Devices.Midi2.h
1 File(s) 349,214 bytes
Directory of C:\demos\cppwinrt\projection\winrt\impl
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> .
11/09/2023 02:26 PM <DIR> ..
11/09/2023 02:26 PM 155,054 Windows.Devices.Midi2.0.h
11/09/2023 02:26 PM 22,170 Windows.Devices.Midi2.1.h
11/09/2023 02:26 PM 26,886 Windows.Devices.Midi2.2.h
3 File(s) 204,110 bytes
Total Files Listed:
5 File(s) 609,132 bytes
11 Dir(s) 32,988,221,440 bytes free
C:\demos\cppwinrt>
The minimum SDK to build against is 10.0.20348.0, to support Windows 10. If you get a “Mismatched C++/WinRT headers” message, double-check that you are using the cppwinrt.exe from the nuget package and you have the latest SDK installed.
Using the Projection
Once you have the header file referenced, you can use the same sample code used in the C++/WinRT examples. Note that the generated projection header takes care of referencing dependencies from the generated files and from the SDK. You will need to ensure that referenced tree of files is part of your build process by having the correct include path for the generated files and the SDK headers. NOTE: don’t use my example below. That is subject to change. Use what is actually generated by the version of cppwinrt.exe from the NuGet package.
// WARNING: Please don't edit this file. It was generated by C++/WinRT v2.0.220110.5
#pragma once
#ifndef WINRT_Microsoft_Windows_Devices_Midi2_H
#define WINRT_Microsoft_Windows_Devices_Midi2_H
#include "winrt/base.h"
static_assert(winrt::check_version(CPPWINRT_VERSION, "2.0.220110.5"), "Mismatched C++/WinRT headers.");
#define CPPWINRT_VERSION "2.0.220110.5"
#include "winrt/Windows.Devices.h"
#include "winrt/impl/Windows.Data.Json.2.h"
#include "winrt/impl/Windows.Devices.Enumeration.2.h"
#include "winrt/impl/Windows.Devices.Midi.2.h"
#include "winrt/impl/Windows.Foundation.2.h"
#include "winrt/impl/Windows.Foundation.Collections.2.h"
#include "winrt/impl/Microsoft.Windows.Devices.Midi2.2.h"
...
GCC Support
We haven’t tried it ourselves, but C++/WinRT does appear to be compatible with GCC. See this pull request from 2022.
Consuming from NodeJS / Electron
We are investigating projection support for node.js / Electron. We have a prelimary version working. In that version, the code to enumerate endpoints and then send messages in a loop looks like this:
function createWindow () {
const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
width: 800,
height: 600,
webPreferences: {
preload: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js')
}
})
mainWindow.loadFile('index.html')
// Enumerate endpoints
const endpoints = midi2.MidiEndpointDeviceInformation.findAll(
midi2.MidiEndpointDeviceInformationSortOrder.name,
midi2.MidiEndpointDeviceInformationFilters.diagnosticLoopback +
midi2.MidiEndpointDeviceInformationFilters.standardNativeUniversalMidiPacketFormat +
midi2.MidiEndpointDeviceInformationFilters.standardNativeMidi1ByteFormat);
console.log(endpoints);
for (var i = 0; i < endpoints.size; i++)
{
var endpoint = endpoints.getAt(i);
console.log(endpoint.id);
console.log(endpoint.deviceInstanceId);
console.log(endpoint.name);
console.log("------------------------------------------------");
console.log("");
}
const loopbackAId = midi2.MidiDiagnostics.diagnosticsLoopbackAEndpointDeviceId;
const loopbackBId = midi2.MidiDiagnostics.diagnosticsLoopbackBEndpointDeviceId;
// create a new session
var session = midi2.MidiSession.create("Electron Test Session");
// connect to loopback A
var sendConnection = session.createEndpointConnection(loopbackAId);
// connection needs to be opened before it is used
sendConnection.open();
// send messages out to that endpoint
for (var j = 0; j < 1000; j++)
{
sendConnection.sendSingleMessageWords(midi2.MidiClock.now, 0x48675309, 0xDEADBEEF);
}
session.close();
}
You can see it’s very similar to the code for other languages like C# and C++.
Here’s what the output looked like in the initial test. I also had a midi.exe console running and all 1000 messages were received.
C:\demos\node-midi\electron-midi>npm start
> electron-midi@1.0.0 start
> electron .
Windows::Foundation::Collections:IVectorView {
__winRtInstance__: true
}
\\?\SWD#MIDISRV#MIDIU_DIAG_LOOPBACK_A#{e7cce071-3c03-423f-88d3-f1045d02552b}
SWD\MIDISRV\MIDIU_DIAG_LOOPBACK_A
Diagnostics Loopback A
------------------------------------------------
\\?\SWD#MIDISRV#MIDIU_DIAG_LOOPBACK_B#{e7cce071-3c03-423f-88d3-f1045d02552b}
SWD\MIDISRV\MIDIU_DIAG_LOOPBACK_B
Diagnostics Loopback B
------------------------------------------------
\\?\SWD#MIDISRV#MIDIU_KS_BIDI_14488056966904779946_OUTPIN.0_INPIN.1#{e7cce071-3c03-423f-88d3-f1045d02552b}
SWD\MIDISRV\MIDIU_KS_BIDI_14488056966904779946_OUTPIN.0_INPIN.1
UM-ONE
------------------------------------------------
C:\demos\node-midi\electron-midi>
Flutter / Dart
Once the API is in-box on Windows, it will be possible for the projections to be generated by the Flutter/Dart teams, like they do with the Windows SDK today.
Webview2 Hosted / PWA
We are investigating.
Python
Once the API is in the Windows SDK, tools like PyWinRT can be used to create projections.