Lavalink does not have a maven repository and instead uses Jitpack. You can add the following to your POM if you're using Maven:

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.github.freyacodes</groupId>
        <artifactId>Lavalink-Client</artifactId>
        <version>x.y.z</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>jitpack.io</id>
        <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Or Gradle:

    repositories {
        maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
    }

    dependencies {
        compile group: 'com.github.freyacodes', name: 'Lavalink-Client', version: 'x.y.z'
    }

Jitpack versioning is based on git branches and commit hashes, or tags. Eg:

ab123c4d
master-SNAPSHOT
dev-SNAPSHOT
3.2

Note: The above versions are for example purposes only.

Version tags of this client are expected to roughly follow lavalink server versioning.

Version 4 drops JDA3 support in favour of JDA4. This uses a non-internal JDA API to intercept voice handling. This requires adding an interceptor to your JDABuilder or DefaultShardManagerBuilder. See examples of using #setVoiceDispatchInterceptor below.

The v3 client has been made to be generic, meaning that the base client can now be used without JDA. This will break bots built on v2, as the classes Lavalink and Link has been made abstract. For use with JDA you will want to reference the JDA-specific implementations JdaLavalink and JdaLink.

If you for some reason need to use the abstract classes, you might experience type erasure problems.

This guide assumes you have JDA in your classpath, and your bot is written with JDA.

All your shards should share a single Lavalink instance. Here is how to construct an instance:

JdaLavalink lavalink = new JdaLavalink(
                myDiscordUserId,
                fixedNumberOfShards,
                shardId -> getJdaInstanceFromId(shardId)
        );

The interesting part is the third parameter, which is a Function<Integer, JDA>. You must define this Function so that Lavalink can get your current JDA instance for that shardId.

You can now register remote nodes to your Lavalink instance:

lavalink.addNode("ws://example.com", "my-secret-password");

If a node is down Lavalink will continue trying to connect until you remove the node. When a node dies Lavalink will attempt to balance the load unto other nodes if they are available.

Next when you are building a shard, you must register Lavalink as an event listener to bind your shard. You may not register more than one Lavalink instance per shard.

new JDABuilder(AccountType.BOT)
        .addEventListener(myJdaLavalinkInstance)
        .setVoiceDispatchInterceptor(myJdaLavalinkInstance.getVoiceInterceptor())
        ...

The JdaLink class is the state of one of your guilds in relation to Lavalink. A JdaLink object is instantiated if it doesn't exist already when invoking JdaLavalink#getLink(Guild/String).

JdaLink someLink = myLavalink.getLink(someGuild);
someLink = myLavalink.getLink(someGuildId);

Here are a few important methods:

• connect(VoiceChannel channel) connects you to a VoiceChannel.
  • Note: This also works for moving to a new channel, in which case we will disconnect first.
• disconnect() disconnects from the VoiceChannel.
• destroy() resets the state of the Link and removes Lavalink's internal reference to this Link. This Link should be discarded.
• getPlayer() returns an IPlayer you can use to play music with.

The IPlayer more or less works like a drop-in replacement for Lavaplayer's AudioPlayer. Which leads me to...

Warning: You should not use JDA's AudioManager#openAudioConnection() or AudioManager#closeAudioConnection() when Lavalink is being used. Use Link instead.

One of the requirements for Lavalink to work with FredBoat was to make Lavalink optional, so we could support selfhosters who do not want to run Lavalink. (This has since been removed from FredBoat).

Lavalink-Client adds an abstraction layer:

• IPlayer in place of AudioPlayer
• IPlayerEventListener in place of AudioEventListener
• PlayerEventListenerAdapter in place of AudioEventAdapter

What this means is that if you want to use Lavaplayer directly instead, you can still use IPlayer.

IPlayer myNewPlayer = isLavalinkEnabled
        ? lavalink.getLink(guildId).getPlayer()
        : new LavaplayerPlayerWrapper(myLavaplayerPlayerManager.createPlayer());

Lavalink-Client allows access to the client WebSockets with Lavalink#getNodes(). This is useful if you want to read the statistics and state of a node connection.

Useful methods:

• isAvailable() Whether or not we are connected and can play music.
• getRemoteUri() Returns a URI of the remote address.
• getStats() Returns a nullable RemoteStats object, with statistics from the Lavalink Server. Updated every minute.

If you are experiencing problems with playing audio or joining a voice channel with Lavalink please check to see if all these apply to you:

1. You are adding the Lavalink instance to your JDABuilder before building it. Lavalink must be able to receive the ready event.
2. You don't have multiple Lavalink instances.
3. You don't attempt to join a voice channel via JDA directly.

Since this client has been rewritten to be generic, it is possible to write custom implementations of the abstract Lavalink and Link classes.

The client was made generic with FredBoat in mind, but if you need generics for your own purposes, you can open an issue and I can elaborate on this brief documentation.