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coolsnowmen
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Joined: 30 Jun 2004
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 Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:42 pm Post subject: How to use dbus to control things in kde4 |
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How to use dbus to control things in kde4
My apologies if this is somewhere on the forums, but I found very little information on it, and thought that people who used to love dcop would appreciate a primer.
I did this on kde 4.1.69 from the kdesvn overlay
Utilities I used
dbus-send, dbus-monitor [ sys-apps/dbus ]
qdbusviewer [ x11-libs/qt-gui ]
your dbus-send command will look something like this:
| Code: | | dbus-send --print-reply --type=method_call --dest=$DESTINATION /$OBJECTPATH $MESSSAGENAME.$METHOD $ARGUMENTLIST |
I'm going to use telling kde to logout as an example.
Running qdbusviewer one can browse all the messages that are made available currently. For kde 4.1++ there is a lot of interface information installed already.
If your method is going to take arguments, be sure to leave a man dbus-send window open to figure out how to put them in. For simple arguments it will be of the form type1:value type2:value ...
On to my search, not wanting to browse everything just yet I'm going to grep for it to see if I get lucky.
| Code: | my_computer # cd / usr/kde/4.2/share/dbus-1/
my_computer # find -name "*.xml" -exec grep -Hi shutdown '{}' \;
./interfaces/org.kde.nsplugins.instance.xml: <method name="shutdown">
./interfaces/org.kde.KSMServerInterface.xml: <method name="canShutdown">
./interfaces/org.kde.nsplugins.viewer.xml: <method name="shutdown">
./interfaces/org.kde.nepomuk.ServiceControl.xml: <method name="shutdown" />
./interfaces/org.kde.kopete.Client.xml: <signal name="shutdownRequested">
./interfaces/org.kde.KCookieServer.xml: <method name="shutdown">
my_computer # find -name "*.xml" -exec grep -Hi logo '{}' \;
./interfaces/org.kde.KSMServerInterface.xml: <method name="logout">
./interfaces/org.kde.cervisia.cvsservice.xml: <method name="logout"> |
Looking through, I would say that ./interfaces/org.kde.KSMServerInterface.xml is of interest.
opening it up I see the interface information I need to help narrow down my search.
| Code: | <interface name="org.kde.KSMServerInterface">
<method name="logout">
<arg type="i" direction="in"/>
<arg type="i" direction="in"/>
<arg type="i" direction="in"/>
</method>
<method name="canShutdown">
<arg type="b" direction="out"/>
</method> |
in a window can see at all times I run dbus-monitor, if you don't have the window space, then consider sshing in to do this. Because dbus event notifications get sent when you change windows in kde4 and this will push out the stuff you want to see.
So I run qdbusviewer with this I can browse various dbus interfaces and test them and see what is sent to the monitor
I can browse org.kde.kwin and force a screen refresh, or a desktop switch. If the method takes arguments then qdbusviewer will prompt for them. Sadly I don't know if important argument values are published anywhere,
Clicking on the refresh method I see this in my monitor:
method call sender=:1.53 -> dest=org.kde.kwin path=/KWin; interface=org.kde.KWin; member=refresh
This tells everything I need to know to form my command:
dbus-send --print-reply --type=method_call --dest=org.kde.kwin /KWin org.kde.KWin.refresh
well with compositing on we don't see anything special but
| Code: | | dbus-send --print-reply --type=method_call --dest=org.kde.kwin /KWin org.kde.KWin.currentDesktop |
returns int32 1
| Code: | | dbus-send --print-reply --type=method_call --dest=org.kde.kwin /KWin org.kde.KWin.nextDesktop |
ooOO, it works
The whole purpose for me was to script cleaning shutdowns so here is my final test (don't test this unless you are prepared for it to work!!)
| Code: | | dbus-send --print-reply --type=method_call --dest="org.kde.ksmserver" /KSMServer org.kde.KSMServerInterface.logout int32:0 int32:0 int32:0 |
I don't know what other arguments would do, but I know this worked for me.
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steveL
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Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:38 pm Post subject: Re: How to use dbus to control things in kde4 |
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| coolsnowmen wrote: | | My apologies if this is somewhere on the forums, but I found very little information on it, and thought that people who used to love dcop would appreciate a primer. |
Wow this rocks coolsnowmen; I used to love dcop so much appreciated :-) |
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coolsnowmen
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Joined: 30 Jun 2004
Posts: 1479
Location: No.VA
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 4:39 am Post subject: |
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I appreciate the thanks. feel free to ask any questions, or point out information that would have helped in the original post...
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steveL
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Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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| I will when I finally upgrade (4.2.1 or sth I reckon) :-) |
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