Allow automatic notes.json-reload when the file has been changed on disc

[goebbe]

For android, there is a companion app to sticky notes, called "styncy notes":
https://gitlab.com/gbygrave/styncynotes

In short: styncy note uses the same file format and look and feel as sticky notes.
The idea is to use e.g. syncthing to sync the notes.json file and to be able to check or edit sticky notes from an android device.

Currently, this works fine - in one direction only: I.e. I can sync and look at my sticky note from my android device.

However, if I update the note on android, the changes do not appear on the desktop after syncing.

• the file sync itself seem to work fine: the notes.json file is synced and the updated notes.json file can be opened, e.g. with a text editor on my Linux Mint laptop.
• I did not find a simple solution to reload the updated notes.json file.

Is there a way to trigger a reload of the updated notes.json file from the command line?

Would it be possible to add an option (opt in) to sticky notes to reload a file when the notes.json file has been changed?

Thanks a lot in advance.

[goebbe]

I found an answer to my first question:
The following command will reload the notes.json file:
dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.x.sticky /org/x/sticky org.x.sticky.ReloadNotesFromFile

Now I am looking for a way to trigger this event, when the notes.json file has been changed by an external (external to sticky note) event.

[kovacslt]

Thanks for that. I'm fiddling with the same issue.
Maybe with an inotifyevent via shellscript?

An example from here

inotifywait -m -e $EVENTS --format '%w%f' $TARGET | while read FILE
do
    $ACTION "$FILE"
done

The action could be that dbus-send command.

[goebbe]

@kovacslt Thanks a lot for your suggestion. My guess would be that this would trigger the reload - even in cases where Sticky Notes itself writes to the file. Not sure if this would be a problem.
Please report here, if you test this.

There is also https://gitlab.com/gbygrave/hookthing to trigger a reload. However, setting this up is quite challenging and the whole approach: setting up a systemd.service to monitor the rest api of syncthing to check if notes.json has been modified seems to be pretty heavyweight.

Aren't there GTK-apps (i.e. Text editors / File managers) that are able to automatically reload, or warn, when an (opened) file has been modified on disk? How do they approach this?

[kovacslt]

That oneliner actually seems to work:

inotifywait -m  /home/laco/.config/sticky/notes.json | while read FILE ; echo $FILE ; do if [[ $FILE == "/home/laco/.config/sticky/notes.json MOVE_SELF" ]]; then dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.x.sticky /org/x/sticky org.x.sticky.ReloadNotesFromFile; fi; done

I use Seafile, syncong on computer Seafile client, on the phone Foldersync.
Seafile client does that MOVE_SELF operation, which Sticky Notes on its own doesn't, so it seems to be OK for detecting the "external change".
Without such filtering an infinite loop forms because of huge lots of file changes.

A screenshot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19jy1irNprJcPEg8MYBHww9RUIEfUTsDm/view?usp=sharing

A minor annoyance is that the notes show up when reloaded this way. So if they are hidden, not on the screen, and when synchronization updates the json, the reload message is sent via dbus, sticky reloads the file, and show the updated notes on the screen, even if it was hidden...

[goebbe]

@kovacsit Thanks for sharing!
Now, I installed inotify myself for testing.

Using Syncthing for syncing, it seems to be a "MOVED_TO" event, that finishes the sync.
When I edit my sticky notes on the Desktop, inotify registers a "MODIFY" event - so this provides a nice way to force the reload, only after a sync (via Syncthing).

The following script works well, using Syncthing:

#!/bin/bash
inotifywait -m -e move \
  "/home/goebbe/.config/sticky" | while read DIR EVENT FILE
  do
    if [[ ${EVENT} == "MOVED_TO" ]] && [[ ${FILE} == "notes.json" ]]
    then
      dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.x.sticky /org/x/sticky org.x.sticky.ReloadNotesFromFile
    fi
  done

And as a one-liner:

inotifywait -m -e move "/home/goebbe/.config/sticky" | while read DIR EVENT FILE ; do if [[ ${EVENT} == "MOVED_TO" ]] && [[ ${FILE} == "notes.json" ]]; then dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.x.sticky /org/x/sticky org.x.sticky.ReloadNotesFromFile; fi; done