bumblebee-status/doc/HOWTO_MODULE.md
2020-04-13 09:11:19 +02:00

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# Writing a bumblebee-status module
## Introduction
Adding a new module to `bumblebee-status` is straight-forward:
- Add a new Python module in `modules/contrib/`. The name of the
module will be the name that the user needs to specify when
invoking `bumblebee-status` (i.e. a module called `modules/contrib/test.py`
will be loaded using `bumblebee-status -m test`)
- See below for how to actually write the module
- Test (run `bumblebee-status` in the CLI)
- Make sure your changes don't break anything: `./coverage.sh`
## Pull requests
The project **gladly** accepts PRs for bugfixes, new functionality, new
modules, etc.
When you feel comfortable with what you've developed, please just open
a PR, somebody will look at it eventually :) Thanks!
## Coding guidelines
I'm pretty open to whatever style you use, but if it's all the same to you
(and yes, I know that the current codebase is only slowly adapting to this):
- Please favour single quotes for strings (except for docstrings, which are always """)
- For private methods/variables, please use a leading `__` (e.g. `__output` rather than `_output`)
## Hello world
This example will show "hello world" in the status bar:
```python
"""Short description"""
import core.module
import core.widget
class Module(core.module.Module):
def __init__(self, config):
super().__init__(config, core.widget.Widget(self.full_text))
def full_text(self, widgets):
return 'hello world'
# vim: tabstop=8 expandtab shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4
```
## Of modules and widgets
There are two important concepts for module writers:
- A module is something that offers a single set of coherent functionality
- A module has 1 to n "widgets", which translates to individual blocks in the i3bar
Very often, this is a 1:1 relationship, and a single module has a single widget. If that's the
case for you, you can stop reading now :)
Otherwise, you have a number of ways to handle widgets:
- During the `super().init__(...)` inside the module's constructor, you can specify a **list**
of widgets, and those will comprise the widgets (in ordered fashion)
- During runtime, you can set a new list of widgets by using the `self.widgets(<new list>)`
method of the module
TODO: expand on this
## Periodic updates
`bumblebee-status` modules have two different ways to update their data:
1. Each interval, the callback registered when the widget was created is called. You can do arbitrarily complex things there
2. Each interval, **before** the widget's callback is invoked, a generic `update(self, widgets)` method is called on the **module**
Largely, where you want to put your update code is up to you. My observations:
- If you want to change the widgets a module has, you **have** to stick with `update()`
- For simple modules, doing the data update in the widget callback is simplest (see `kernel`, for example)
## Advanced topics
### Event handlers
The `core.input` module can be used to execute callbacks during mouse events:
```python
import core.module
import core.widget
import core.input
class Module(core.module.Module):
@core.decorators.every(minutes=60, seconds=20)
def __init__(self, config):
super().__init__(config=config, widgets=<widgets>)
core.input.register(widget, button=core.input.LEFT_MOUSE, cmd=<cmd>)
```
The command can be either a CLI tool that will be directly executed (e.g. `cmd='shutdown -h now'`)
or a method that will be executed. The method's signature needs to be: `def <name>(self, event)`,
where "event" is the event data provided by i3wm.
The full list of possible bindings:
- LEFT_MOUSE
- RIGHT_MOUSE
- MIDDLE_MOUSE
- WHEEL_UP
- WHEEL_UP
### Setting a default update interval
To change the default update interval, you can use a simple decorator:
```python
import core.module
import core.widget
import core.decorators
class Module(core.module.Module):
@core.decorators.every(minutes=60, seconds=20)
def __init__(self, config):
super().__init__(config=config, widgets=<widgets>)
```
**NOTE**: This makes the update interval of the module independent of what the
user configures via `-i <interval>`! It is still possible to override the module's
interval using `-p <module>.interval=<value>`, however.
## TODOs
- default update interval
- scrolling
- theme.minwidth
- scrolling decorator
- theme.exclude
- per module update interval -> nice string format
- update via events