API docs

API docs or "Application Programming Interface Documentation" is a fancy name for a list of all the things a piece of software can do, and how to use them.

The docs list all of the methods available.

Method signature

You will see a block of code like this:

record_video(
    filename: str,
    duration: int
) -> str

This tells you:

• the name of the method (record_video)
• the parameters it can accept (filename and duration)
• the type of data accepted by each parameter
  • filename needs a str (string)
  • duration needs an int (integer)
• what the method returns (-> str)

Parameter list

This is a list of all parameters, their data type, their default value, whether it is compulsory for you to provide a value and a description of what each one does.

Parameter	Data type	Default	Compulsory?	Description
filename	str	None	Yes	A file name for a .mp4 video. This can also be a path to a file.
duration	int	5	No	The length of time to record, in seconds.

Example

An example of how to call the method is provided.

cam.record_video("test_video.mp4", 10)

The example will always assume you have already imported the picamzero library, and created a camera. The full code to run this example would be:

from picamzero import Camera
cam = Camera()
cam.record_video("test_video.mp4", 10)

Now that you know how to read API docs, have a look at the photo methods, video methods and preview methods.