Nushell plugin for interacting with D-Bus
With the commands provided by this plugin, you can interact with many of the desktop-oriented systems on UNIX-like systems that use D-Bus, including Linux and FreeBSD. You can control media players, on-screen displays, power policies, and even administer services.
Nushell provides a particularly nice environment for interacting with D-Bus, as both support typed
structured data, and interacting with this on a traditional UNIX command line with tools like
dbus-send and busctl is cumbersome and tricky to automate.
This plugin automatically determines the correct input types through D-Bus introspection when available, unlike either of the aforementioned tools, making it easier to interact with objects on the bus without having to implement boilerplate from documentation.
From within nushell:
cargo install --locked nu_plugin_dbus
plugin add ~/.cargo/bin/nu_plugin_dbus
plugin use dbus # or restart nuCommands for interacting with D-Bus
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus
Subcommands:
dbus call - Call a method and get its response
dbus get - Get a D-Bus property
dbus get-all - Get all D-Bus properties for the given object
dbus introspect - Introspect a D-Bus object
dbus list - List all available connection names on the bus
dbus set - Set a D-Bus property
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
Call a method and get its response
Returns an array if the method call returns more than one value.
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus call {flags} <object> <interface> <method> ...(args)
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
--session - Send to the session message bus (default)
--system - Send to the system message bus
--started - Send to the bus that started this process, if applicable
--bus <String> - Send to the bus server at the given address
--peer <String> - Send to a non-bus D-Bus server at the given address. Will not call the Hello method on initialization.
--timeout <Duration> - How long to wait for a response
--signature <String> - Signature of the arguments to send, in D-Bus format.
If not provided, they will be determined from introspection.
If --no-introspect is specified and this is not provided, they will be guessed (poorly)
--no-flatten - Always return a list of all return values
--no-introspect - Don't use introspection to determine the correct argument signature
--dest (required parameter) <String> - The name of the connection to send the method to
Parameters:
object <string>: The path to the object to call the method on
interface <string>: The name of the interface the method belongs to
method <string>: The name of the method to send
...args <any>: Arguments to send with the method call
Input/output types:
╭───┬─────────┬────────╮
│ # │ input │ output │
├───┼─────────┼────────┤
│ 0 │ nothing │ any │
╰───┴─────────┴────────╯
Examples:
Ping the D-Bus server itself
> dbus call --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.Peer Ping
Show a notification on the desktop for 5 seconds
> dbus call --dest=org.freedesktop.Notifications /org/freedesktop/Notifications org.freedesktop.Notifications Notify "Floppy disks" 0 "media-floppy" "Rarely seen" "But sometimes still used" [] {} 5000
Get a D-Bus property
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus get {flags} <object> <interface> <property>
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
--session - Send to the session message bus (default)
--system - Send to the system message bus
--started - Send to the bus that started this process, if applicable
--bus <String> - Send to the bus server at the given address
--peer <String> - Send to a non-bus D-Bus server at the given address. Will not call the Hello method on initialization.
--timeout <Duration> - How long to wait for a response
--dest (required parameter) <String> - The name of the connection to read the property from
Parameters:
object <string>: The path to the object to read the property from
interface <string>: The name of the interface the property belongs to
property <string>: The name of the property to read
Input/output types:
╭───┬─────────┬────────╮
│ # │ input │ output │
├───┼─────────┼────────┤
│ 0 │ nothing │ any │
╰───┴─────────┴────────╯
Examples:
Get the currently playing song in Spotify
> dbus get --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player Metadata
╭──────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ xesam:title │ Birdie │
│ xesam:artist │ [list 1 item] │
│ xesam:album │ Love Your Love │
│ xesam:url │ https://open.spotify.com/track/51748BvzeeMs4PIdPuyZmv │
╰──────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
Get all D-Bus properties for the given object
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus get-all {flags} <object> <interface>
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
--session - Send to the session message bus (default)
--system - Send to the system message bus
--started - Send to the bus that started this process, if applicable
--bus <String> - Send to the bus server at the given address
--peer <String> - Send to a non-bus D-Bus server at the given address. Will not call the Hello method on initialization.
--timeout <Duration> - How long to wait for a response
--dest (required parameter) <String> - The name of the connection to read the property from
Parameters:
object <string>: The path to the object to read the property from
interface <string>: The name of the interface the property belongs to
Input/output types:
╭───┬─────────┬────────╮
│ # │ input │ output │
├───┼─────────┼────────┤
│ 0 │ nothing │ record │
╰───┴─────────┴────────╯
Examples:
Get the current player state of Spotify
> dbus get-all --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player
╭────────────────┬────────╮
│ CanPlay │ true │
│ Volume │ 0.43 │
│ PlaybackStatus │ Paused │
╰────────────────┴────────╯
Introspect a D-Bus object
Returns information about available nodes, interfaces, methods, signals, and properties on the given object path
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus introspect {flags} <object>
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
--session - Send to the session message bus (default)
--system - Send to the system message bus
--started - Send to the bus that started this process, if applicable
--bus <String> - Send to the bus server at the given address
--peer <String> - Send to a non-bus D-Bus server at the given address. Will not call the Hello method on initialization.
--timeout <Duration> - How long to wait for a response
--dest (required parameter) <String> - The name of the connection that owns the object
Parameters:
object <string>: The path to the object to introspect
Input/output types:
╭───┬─────────┬────────╮
│ # │ input │ output │
├───┼─────────┼────────┤
│ 0 │ nothing │ record │
╰───┴─────────┴────────╯
Examples:
Look at the MPRIS2 interfaces exposed by Spotify
> dbus introspect --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 | explore
Get methods exposed by KDE Plasma's on-screen display service
> dbus introspect --dest=org.kde.plasmashell /org/kde/osdService | get interfaces | where name == org.kde.osdService | get 0.methods
List objects exposed by KWin
> dbus introspect --dest=org.kde.KWin / | get children | select name
List all available connection names on the bus
These can be used as arguments for --dest on any of the other commands.
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus list {flags} (pattern)
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
--session - Send to the session message bus (default)
--system - Send to the system message bus
--started - Send to the bus that started this process, if applicable
--bus <String> - Send to the bus server at the given address
--peer <String> - Send to a non-bus D-Bus server at the given address. Will not call the Hello method on initialization.
--timeout <Duration> - How long to wait for a response
Parameters:
pattern <string>: An optional glob-like pattern to filter the result by (optional)
Input/output types:
╭───┬─────────┬──────────────╮
│ # │ input │ output │
├───┼─────────┼──────────────┤
│ 0 │ nothing │ list<string> │
╰───┴─────────┴──────────────╯
Examples:
List all names available on the bus
> dbus list
List top-level freedesktop.org names on the bus (e.g. matches `org.freedesktop.PowerManagement`, but not `org.freedesktop.Management.Inhibit`)
> dbus list org.freedesktop.*
╭───┬───────────────────────────────╮
│ 0 │ org.freedesktop.DBus │
│ 1 │ org.freedesktop.Flatpak │
│ 2 │ org.freedesktop.Notifications │
╰───┴───────────────────────────────╯
List all MPRIS2 media players on the bus
> dbus list org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.**
╭───┬────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ 0 │ org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify │
│ 1 │ org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.kdeconnect.mpris_000001 │
╰───┴────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
Set a D-Bus property
Search terms: dbus
Usage:
> dbus set {flags} <object> <interface> <property> <value>
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
--session - Send to the session message bus (default)
--system - Send to the system message bus
--started - Send to the bus that started this process, if applicable
--bus <String> - Send to the bus server at the given address
--peer <String> - Send to a non-bus D-Bus server at the given address. Will not call the Hello method on initialization.
--timeout <Duration> - How long to wait for a response
--signature <String> - Signature of the value to set, in D-Bus format.
If not provided, it will be determined from introspection.
If --no-introspect is specified and this is not provided, it will be guessed (poorly)
--dest (required parameter) <String> - The name of the connection to write the property on
Parameters:
object <string>: The path to the object to write the property on
interface <string>: The name of the interface the property belongs to
property <string>: The name of the property to write
value <any>: The value to write to the property
Input/output types:
╭───┬─────────┬─────────╮
│ # │ input │ output │
├───┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ 0 │ nothing │ nothing │
╰───┴─────────┴─────────╯
Examples:
Set the volume of Spotify to 50%
> dbus set --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player Volume 0.5