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gapplicationgapplication — D-Bus application launcher |
Synopsis
gapplication help [COMMAND]
gapplication version
gapplication list-apps
gapplication launch APPID
gapplication launch APPID [FILE...]
gapplication list-actions APPID
gapplication action APPID ACTION [PARAMETER]
Description
gapplication is a commandline implementation of the client-side of the
org.freedesktop.Application interface as specified by the freedesktop.org
Desktop Entry Specification.
gapplication can be used to start applications that have
DBusActivatable set to true in their .desktop
files and can be used to send messages to already-running instances of other applications.
It is possible for applications to refer to gapplication in the Exec
line of their .desktop file to maintain backwards compatibility
with implementations that do not directly support DBusActivatable.
gapplication ships as part of GLib.
Commands
Global commands
help
[ |
Displays a short synopsis of the available commands or provides detailed help on a specific command. |
version |
Prints the GLib version whence gapplication came. |
list-apps |
Prints a list of all application IDs that are known to support D-Bus activation. This list is
generated by scanning |
launch
|
Launches an application.
The first parameter is the application ID in the familiar "reverse DNS" style (eg:
' Optionally, if additional parameters are given, they are treated as the names of files to open and may be filenames or URIs. If no files are given then the application is simply activated. |
list-actions
|
List the actions declared in the application's |
action
|
Invokes the named action (in the same way as would occur when activating an action specified in
the The application ID (as above) is the first parameter. The action name follows. Optionally, following the action name can be one parameter, in GVariant format, given as a single argument. Make sure to use sufficient quoting. |
Examples
From the commandline
Launching an application:
gapplication launch org.example.fooview
Opening a file with an application:
gapplication launch org.example.fooview ~/file.foo
Opening many files with an application:
gapplication launch org.example.fooview ~/foos/*.foo
Invoking an action on an application:
gapplication action org.example.fooview create
Invoking an action on an application, with an action:
gapplication action org.example.fooview show-item '"item_id_828739"'
From the Exec lines of a .desktop file
The commandline interface of gapplication was designed so that it could be used
directly from the Exec line of a .desktop
file.
You might want to do this to allow for backwards compatibility with implementations of the specification that do not understand how to do D-Bus activation, without having to install a separate utility program.
Consider the following example:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.1
Type=Application
Name=Foo Viewer
DBusActivatable=true
MimeType=image/x-foo;
Exec=gapplication launch org.example.fooview %F
Actions=gallery;create;
[Desktop Action gallery]
Name=Browse Gallery
Exec=gapplication action org.example.fooview gallery
[Desktop Action create]
Name=Create a new Foo!
Exec=gapplication action org.example.fooview create
From a script
If installing an application that supports D-Bus activation you may still want to put a file in
/usr/bin so that your program can be started from a terminal.
It is possible for this file to be a shell script. The script can handle arguments such as --help and --version directly. It can also parse other command line arguments and convert them to uses of gapplication to activate the application, open files, or invoke actions.
Here is a simplified example, as may be installed in /usr/bin/fooview:
#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
--help)
echo "see 'man fooview' for more information"
;;
--version)
echo "fooview 1.2"
;;
--gallery)
gapplication action org.example.fooview gallery
;;
--create)
gapplication action org.example.fooview create
;;
-*)
echo "unrecognised commandline argument"
exit 1
;;
*)
gapplication launch org.example.fooview "$@"
;;
esac