MozJS D-Bus

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Contents

About

MozJS D-Bus is a poorly named library that makes it possible for Mozilla/Javascript-based applications and extensions to interoperable with D-Bus, which allows for deep integration with the Linux desktop.

This project is written by Eric Butler. Please contact me (email/xmpp) at eric@extremeboredom.net if you have any questions, criticisms, praises or would like to help!

API

See MozJS_D-Bus_API.

Downloading & Building

Source code is available from the mercurial repository. 

$ hg clone http://eric.extremeboredom.net/hg/mozjs_dbus

Here's the basic idea of how to build the code: 

$ cd recent-mozilla-trunk/extensions/
$ hg clone http://eric.extremeboredom.net/hg/mozjs_dbus
$ cd ..
$ ./configure --enable-dbus --enable-extensions=mozjs_dbus --enable-applications=firefox
$ make

This will build a .xpi in dist/bin/xpi-stage, which can be loaded as a Firefox extension. There's will also be an application.ini file in dist/bin/xpi-stage/mozjs_dbus, which should work with xulrunner.

Usage & Examples

Once the extension has been loaded into your application, you can import the types into your current javascript scope by using: 

Components.utils.import("resource://mozjs_dbus/DBUS.jsm");

Basic remote method calls 

 var bus = DBUS.getSessionBus();
 var nf  = bus.getObject("org.freedesktop.Notifications", 
                         "/org/freedesktop/Notifications",
                         "org.freedesktop.Notifications");
 alert(nf.GetCapabilities());

Dealing with Signals 

 var bus = DBUS.getSessionBus();
 var nf  = bus.getObject("org.freedesktop.Notifications", 
                         "/org/freedesktop/Notifications",
                         "org.freedesktop.Notifications");
   
 nf.connectToSignal('NotificationClosed', function (id, reason) {
     alert('Notification Closed! ' + id + ' .. ' + reason);
 });
 
 nf.connectToSignal('ActionInvoked', function (id, action_key) {
     alert('Action Invoked! ' + id + ' .. ' + action_key);
 });

Custom Services

MozJS D-Bus supports creating new services using Javascript. 

 var testObj = new DBusObject();
 var iface = testObj.defineInterface("net.extremeboredom.TestInterface");
 iface.defineMethod('sum', 'ii', 'i', function(first, second) {
     return first+second;
 });
 iface.defineMethod('hello', , 's', function() {
     return "Hello World!";
 });
 iface.defineSignal('somethingHappen', 'ssi');
 
 var bus = DBUS.getSessionBus();
 var service = bus.requestService('net.extremeboredom.TestService');
 service.exportObject('/Test', testObj);

Status & TODO

The following features are implemented:

  • Basic remote method calls
  • Signal handling
  • XML Introspection
  • Creating new services
  • DICT types

The following features have not yet been implemented (please help!):

  • Support for methods that return more than one value
  • Automatically create a D-Bus service from an XPCOM service
Retrieved from "http://wiki.extremeboredom.net/index.php/MozJS_D-Bus"
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