Communicating via dbus

[vredesbyyrd]

Hi,

First, awesome work on valent. I use awesomewm + mostly gtk programs so it's nice to have a kdeconnect client that better fits in with the tools I already use.

Is it possible to directly launch the messaging window from the command line, perhaps with dbus? When receiving an sms notification I would like to be able to click the notification and launch the messaging window.

I'm trying to get a better grasp on dbus, the spec/syntax overwhelms me a bit. Any pointers you may have would be very appreciated!

[andyholmes]

Basically devices are exported using the standard Object Manager interface, and each device has it's own object path and a org.gtk.Actions interface for what it supports:

The easiest way to use the interface I guess is using something that can consume remote GAction groups (org.gtk.Actions), like pygobject or gjs or something. Otherwise you'll want to get the ID for your device and make a call to ca.andyholmes.Valent at the object path /ca/andyholmes/Valent/Device/<device-id>, interface org.gtk.Actions, and method Activate() with parameters ('sms.messaging', [], {}). Depending on what tools you have installed you can check the e.g. gdbus --help for applying those.

The actions themselves aren't documented, since they're part of the plugin rather the API. The org.gtk.Actions interface is somewhat self-documenting though:

[vredesbyyrd]

Much appreciate the detailed explanation, and I was unaware of D-Spy, that helps a lot :)

I am running awesomewm which is configured with lua, so I probably could use lgi, the lua GObject bindings. But for now I am just trying to call a single method, so shelling out seems the simpler approach. From your explanation and looking at the gdbus documentation I think the command should look something like:

gdbus call --session --dest ca.andyholmes.Valent --object-path /ca/andyholmes/Valent/Device/<my-device-id> --interface org.gtk.Actions --method org.gtk.Actions.Activate "sms.messaging"

I am struggling to figure out the syntax for the method parameters. Running the above command returns the gdbus call help. I see examples doing:

--method foo.bar parameter [] {}

I'm just lost on the proper parameter syntax. You already pretty much spelled it out, but any ideas here would be helpful.

Thanks for your time!

[vredesbyyrd]

Uhg, this entire time I overlooked something obvious. With gdbus you do not need to specify --interface. Interface is used in the method name. The command is as simple as:

gdbus call --session --dest ca.andyholmes.Valent --object-path /ca/andyholmes/Valent/Device/<device-id> --method org.gtk.Actions.Activate sms.messaging [] []

[andyholmes]

If you're using gdbus I think it's just GVariant string format, so probably something like "('sms.messaging', [], {})".

[vredesbyyrd]

Using gdbus and "('sms.messaging', [], {})" errors with:

Error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Type of message, “(s)”, does not match expected type “(sava{sv})”
(According to introspection data, you need to pass 'sava{sv}')

sms.messaging "[]" "[]" is successful.

[andyholmes]

FYI, this changed a little while ago and the window is shared. You can either use D-Bus in a similar way to activate the application action, or run gapplication action ca.andyholmes.Valent messages-window.

[vredesbyyrd]

Perfect. I much appreciate the heads up. I was unaware of gapplication action foobar, that's neat and good to know :)

The new messaging window and work you have done look great. I'll test the changes over the coming days.