WM Integration: i3block

[alx]

Hi @mrichar1 ,

Thanks a lot for this tool, I had great time playing with it and it'll probably help my a lot in various pipelines in coming years.

Here is a quick gadget I made to integrate clipster into i3block, allowing me to quickly view if an element has been copied, and helping me merging the last 2 elements from the pasteboard (main usecase: merging a website url with a matching text description).

• insert into $HOME/.i3blocks.conf

[clipster]                                                
command=$HOME/.config/i3/clipster                         
interval=1

• insert into $HOME/.config/i3/clipster

#!/bin/bash

shortlength=30;
content=`clipster -o -n 2`;

if [ ${#content} -gt 0 ]; then

  isFirstLineRead=false;

  firstLine="";
  secondLine="";

  while read -r line; do
    if [ "$isFirstLineRead" = false ]; then
      isFirstLineRead=true;
      firstLine=$line;
    else
      secondLine=$line;
    fi
  done <<< "$content"

  case $BLOCK_BUTTON in
    1) echo "$secondLine $firstLine" | clipster ;;
  esac

  if [ ${#firstLine} -gt 30 ]; then
    firstLine="${firstLine:0:20}...${firstLine: -10}"
  fi

  if [ ${#secondLine} -gt 30 ]; then
    secondLine="${secondLine:0:7}..."
  fi

  echo "$secondLine | $firstLine"

else
  echo "#empty#"
fi

• add executable flag on $HOME/.config/i3/clipster

chmod +x $HOME/.config/i3/clipster

• restart i3wm: i3-msg restart

The bash script could probably be clearer, improvements and other ideas are welcomed. I'll test it for a week and propose it to https://github.com/acleverpun/i3-blocks-contrib next weekend.

Have a nice day,

Alex

[alx]

Here is an updated version, where you can set the clipster element you want to fetch, using instance variable from i3block.

• $HOME/.i3block.conf

 [clipster2]                                                                      
 command=$HOME/.config/i3/clipster                                                
 instance=2                                                                       
 interval=1                                                                       

 [clipster1]                                                                      
 command=$HOME/.config/i3/clipster                                                
 instance=1                                                                       
 interval=1 

• $HOME/.config/i3/clipster

#!/bin/bash

content=`clipster -o -n $BLOCK_INSTANCE | tail -n1`;

if [ ${#content} -gt 0 ]; then

  case $BLOCK_BUTTON in
    1)
      previous=`clipster -o -n $(($BLOCK_INSTANCE + 1)) | tail -n1`;
      echo "$previous $content" |  tr -d '\n' | clipster
      ;;
  esac

  if [ ${#content} -gt 30 ]; then
    content="${content:0:20}...${content: -10}"
  fi

  echo "$content"

else
  echo "#empty#"
fi

The click on the block is now only merging the previous element (instance index) from clipster.

[mrichar1]

Thanks for this - this does look useful! I'll close this issue, but keep an eye on the i3blocks contrib repo 👍