Is it possible to run this qdbus command as a keyboard shortcut?

[esekyavuz]

Inspired by

http://milianw.de/code-snippets/acce...cli-under-kde4

I decided to try to make this command

qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardContents

which dumps the current clipboard entry to stdout, a keyboard shortcut.

It works fine on the command line (using konsole).

I'd like to set it up as a keyboard shortcut dumping to a file:

qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardContents >> ~/recipes/RecipeLog.txt

But so far no joy.

The problem is not with setting up the key. if I instead use

echo $(date) >> ~/recipes/RecipeLog.txt

there is output.

Is it possible to make this work?

TIA

[james147]

Yes, with the custom shortcuts you can set a keysequence to do just about anything

System settings > shortcuts and gestures > custom shortcuts.

[esekyavuz]

Thanks. Yes that is where I placed the command. Other things will work there, but not this.

I wonder what is different about how a keyboard shortcut is executed compared to something done on the command line.

[james147]

Replace "~" with "$HOME"

~ is expanded by bash, which might not be the shell that is running the command.

Also try &>> to dump stdout and stderr to the file.

Alternatively, create a script with the command you want and set that to run when you press the shortcut.

[esekyavuz]

Thanks again for your help. Sadly, still nothing.

[esekyavuz]

Solved

Well, a miracle has happened. With no ideas left, I tried the command in pieces. First

qdbus >> ~/recipes/RecipeLog.txt

and there was output. The same as the output the command got in konsole. Then I tried

qdbus org.kde.klipper >> ~/recipes/RecipeLog.txt

and the same wonderful news. And the same for

qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper >> ~/recipes/RecipeLog.txt

and finally

qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardContents >> ~/recipes/RecipeLog.txt

I have no clue what was wrong except that I probably (it was hours ago I decided to try this "quick" little feature!!) pasted the line directly from the blog so maybe there was some mysterious invisible character I copied by mistake?

Anyway, this is quite a nice feature now: highlight information and save it to a file in one keystroke!

Thanks again, James147.

[james147]

Note: you could also do this via the clipboard actions using klipper by adding a custom action

[esekyavuz]

Thanks for pointing that out! I added a shortcut there to edit the clipboard. So now it's just a couple of keystrokes to get some random text copied onto the clipboard, the text edited (maybe a note added to explain why it's being clipped), and then into a file. I think the next thing would be to get it to automatically add the source (URL/pdf filename).

[james147]

From the KDE help pages for klipper:

Note that %s in the command line is replaced with the clipboard contents, e.g. if your command definition is kwrite %s and your clipboard contents are /home/phil/textfile, the command kwrite /home/phil/textfile will be run. To include %s in the command line, escape it with a backslash, as so: \%s.

For desktop files/menu entries you can also use:
%f %F files (single, list)
%u %U url (single, list)
%d %D directories (single, list)