Perforce 2006.1 C/C++ API User's Guide


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Chapter 1
Overview

Release compatibility of the API

The Perforce Client API is subject to change from release to release, and is not guaranteed to be source-code compatible from one release to the next. However, clients that you create using the API can run against previous releases of the Perforce server and will probably run against later releases of the Perforce server.

Support for specific features depends on the version of server and API that you use.

Purpose of the API

The Perforce Client API enables you to create client programs that interact with end users, send commands to a Perforce server and process data returned from the server. The API is a programmatic interface, and does not send commands directly to the server.

Architecture of the API

The basic client session is managed by a C++ class called ClientApi. All user interaction with the client is channeled through the ClientUser C++ class. The default methods of ClientUser implement the p4 command line interface. To create custom client programs, create subclasses based on ClientUser.

API files

The Perforce client API consists of header files, link libraries, and the reference implementation of the ClientUser class. Only the libraries are platform-specific.

The API is packaged as an archive or zip file. The source code for the libraries is proprietary and is not included. To download the API, go to the Perforce FTP site and download the file for your platform. For example, to obtain the Macintosh version using a Web browser, use the following URL: ftp://ftp.perforce.com/perforce/r06.1/bin.macosx104ppc/ and download p4api.tar.

(Specific API files can vary from release to release, and so are not individually described here.)