IPC interface (interprocess communication)
==========================================
-Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
-October 2011
+Michael Stapelberg <michael@i3wm.org>
+February 2012
This document describes how to interface with i3 from a separate process. This
is useful for example to remote-control i3 (to write test cases for example) or
The method of choice for IPC in our case is a unix socket because it has very
little overhead on both sides and is usually available without headaches in
most languages. In the default configuration file, the ipc-socket gets created
-in +/tmp/i3-%u/ipc-socket.%p+ where +%u+ is your UNIX username and +%p+ is the
-PID of i3. You can get the socketpath from i3 by calling +i3 --get-socketpath+.
+in +/tmp/i3-%u.XXXXXX/ipc-socket.%p+ where +%u+ is your UNIX username, +%p+ is
+the PID of i3 and XXXXXX is a string of random characters from the portable
+filename character set (see mkdtemp(3)). You can get the socketpath from i3 by
+calling +i3 --get-socketpath+.
All i3 utilities, like +i3-msg+ and +i3-input+ will read the +I3_SOCKET_PATH+
X11 property, stored on the X11 root window.
COMMAND (0)::
The payload of the message is a command for i3 (like the commands you
can bind to keys in the configuration file) and will be executed
- directly after receiving it. There is no reply to this message.
+ directly after receiving it.
GET_WORKSPACES (1)::
Gets the current workspaces. The reply will be a JSON-encoded list of
workspaces (see the reply section).
COMMAND (0)::
Confirmation/Error code for the COMMAND message.
-GET_WORKSPACES (1)::
+WORKSPACES (1)::
Reply to the GET_WORKSPACES message.
SUBSCRIBE (2)::
Confirmation/Error code for the SUBSCRIBE message.
-GET_OUTPUTS (3)::
+OUTPUTS (3)::
Reply to the GET_OUTPUTS message.
-GET_TREE (4)::
+TREE (4)::
Reply to the GET_TREE message.
-GET_MARKS (5)::
+MARKS (5)::
Reply to the GET_MARKS message.
-GET_BAR_CONFIG (6)::
+BAR_CONFIG (6)::
Reply to the GET_BAR_CONFIG message.
=== COMMAND reply
{ "success": true }
-------------------
-=== GET_WORKSPACES reply
+=== WORKSPACES reply
The reply consists of a serialized list of workspaces. Each workspace has the
following properties:
]
-------------------
-=== GET_TREE reply
+=== TREE reply
The reply consists of a serialized tree. Each node in the tree (representing
one container) has at least the properties listed below. While the nodes might
}
------------------------
-=== GET_MARKS reply
+=== MARKS reply
The reply consists of a single array of strings for each container that has a
mark. The order of that array is undefined. If more than one container has the
If no window has a mark the response will be the empty array [].
-=== GET_BAR_CONFIG reply
+=== BAR_CONFIG reply
This can be used by third-party workspace bars (especially i3bar, but others
are free to implement compatible alternatives) to get the +bar+ block
Should the bar enable verbose output for debugging? Defaults to false.
colors (map)::
Contains key/value pairs of colors. Each value is a color code in hex,
- formatted rrggbb (like used in HTML).
+ formatted #rrggbb (like in HTML).
The following colors can be configured at the moment:
"workspace_buttons": true,
"verbose": false,
"colors": {
- "background": "c0c0c0",
- "statusline": "00ff00",
- "focused_workspace_text": "ffffff",
- "focused_workspace_bg": "000000"
+ "background": "#c0c0c0",
+ "statusline": "#00ff00",
+ "focused_workspace_text": "#ffffff",
+ "focused_workspace_bg": "#000000"
}
}
--------------
Perl::
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=AnyEvent::I3
Python::
- http://github.com/thepub/i3ipc
+ https://github.com/whitelynx/i3ipc
+ https://github.com/ziberna/i3-py (includes higher-level features)