i3ipc++

An implementation of i3 IPC in C++11.

Requirements

cmake (>= 3.0)
C++11 compiler
sigc++ 2.0
jsoncpp
i3 (for i3/ipc.h)

Using

Yet the only way of using is to add this repo as a submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/drmgc/i3ipcpp.git ./i3ipc++/

Then just type this in your CMakeLists.txt:

...
add_subdirectory(i3ipc++)

include_directories(${I3IPCpp_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${I3IPCpp_LIBRARY_DIRS})
...

And then just link:

...
target_link_libraries(someapp ${I3IPCpp_LIBRARIES})
...

Usage

See also examples in examples/ directory.

Connecting

#include <i3ipc++/ipc.hpp>

i3ipc::connection  conn;

The connection will be established automaticly.

Event handling

First of all you need to declare the events you want to handle. As example we want to handle an binding and workspace events:

conn.subscribe(i3ipc::ET_WORKSPACE | i3ipc::ET_BINDING);

Then we need to connect to the signal handlers:

// Handler of WORKSPACE EVENT
conn.signal_workspace_event.connect([](const i3ipc::workspace_event_t&  ev) {
    std::cout << "workspace_event: " << (char)ev.type << std::endl;
    if (ev.current) {
        std::cout << "\tSwitched to #" << ev.current->num << " - \"" << ev.current->name << '"' << std::endl;
    }
});

// Handler of binding event
conn.signal_binding_event.connect([](const i3ipc::binding_t&  b) {
    std::cout << "binding_event:" << std::endl
        << "\tcommand = \"" << b.command << '"' << std::endl
        << "\tinput_code = " << b.input_code << std::endl
        << "\tsymbol = " << b.symbol << std::endl
        << "\tinput_type = " << static_cast<char>(b.input_type) << std::endl
        << "\tevent_state_mask =" << std::endl;
    for (const std::string& s : b.event_state_mask) {
        std::cout << "\t\t\"" << s << '"' << std::endl;
    }
});

Then we starting the event-handling loop

while (true) {
    conn.handle_event();
}

Note: If you want to interract with event_socket or just want to prepare manually you can call conn.connect_event_socket() (if you want to reconnect conn.connect_event_socket(true)), but if by default connect_event_socket() called on first handle_event() call.

Requesting

Also you can request some data from i3, as example barconfigs:

std::vector<std::string>  bar_configs = conn.get_bar_configs_list();

And then do with them something:

for (auto&  name : bar_configs) {
    std::shared_ptr<i3ipc::bar_config_t>  bc = conn.get_bar_config(name);

    // ... handling
}

Sending commands

And, of course, you can command i3:

if (!conn.send_command("exit")) {
    throw std::string("Failed to exit via command");
}

Quoted strings can be passed like this:

conn.send_command("[workspace=\" 1 \""] move workspace to output eDP-1");

Version i3 support

It is written according to the current specification, so some of new features in IPC can be not-implemented. If there is some of them, please notice at issues page.

Documentation

The latest documentation you can find here

Licensing

This library is licensed under under the MIT license, but it also uses JsonCpp (only for parsing i3's replies) and my header-only library auss

Backward compatibility note

While version is 0.x there can be a lack of backward compatibility between minor releases, please see release notes.

drmgc / i3ipcpp

readme