Updating Dialog with new content

Some dialog content can be updated on the fly after it has been launched. This is facilitated by sending commands to a command file which Dialog will read and interpret.

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Dialog will need to be launched in the background in order for you to be able to send commands to it (assuming you're calling and commanding dialog from the same script. To do this and allow time for dialog to initiate before sending commands, use the following:

/usr/local/bin/dialog & sleep 0.1

This will launch dialog, background it and sleep for 100 milliseconds which should be enough time to avoid any race conditions.

The default command file is /var/tmp/dialog.log but a custom command file can be set using the --commandfile argument followed by a path where the command file will be written to and read from.

e.g. dialog --commandfile /var/tmp/custom_command_file.log

Commands can be sent in the following manner:

/bin/echo "<command>: <value>" >> /var/tmp/dialog.log

Available Commands

Commands take the same format as they would if used on the command line or via json input

Command	Effect
title: <text>	Updates the dialog title with the specified <text>
title: none.	Hides the title area
message: <text>	Updates the dialog title with the specified <text> For inserting newlines into the message you can use a <br> tag. You can also append to an existing message by prepending message content with a +, e.g. message: + Additional Content and the contents will be added to the end of an existing message.
image: <path/url>	Displays the selected image
imagecaption: <text>	Displays the specified text underneath any displayed image
progress: <int>/<text>	When Dialog is initiated with the --progress command line option, this will update the progress value If an integer value is sent, this will move the progress bar to that value of steps Other options are: * increment - increments the progress by one * reset - resets the progress bar to 0 * complete - maxes out the progress bar
progress: hide/show	Hides or shows the progress bar
progresstext: <text>	Will update the label associated with the progress bar
list: <text/csv>	Create a list from the provided comma separated items
list: clear	Clears the list and removes it from display
listitem: <item>: [<text>/wait]	Update the named item with the additional status text <text> or display a spinning wait cursor
listitem: add, title: <text>[, status: <status>, statustext: <text>]	Add a new item to the end of the current list with the specified title and optionally status and status text
listitem: delete, title: <text>	Delete an item by name
listitem: delete, index: <index>	Delete an item by index number (starting at 0)
button1: [disable/enable]	Will enable or disable the default button
button2: [disable/enable]	Will enable or disable button 2
button1text: <text>	Changes the button 1 label to the value in <text>
button2text: <text>	Changes the button 2 label to the value in <text>
infobuttontext: <text>	Changes the info button label to the value in <text>
infobox: <text>	Update the content in the info box For inserting newlines into the content you can use a <br> tag. You can also append to existing content by prepending the text with a +, e.g. infobox: + Additional Content and the text will be added to the end of any existing infobox content.
icon: <path/url/SF Symbol>	Changes the displayed icon
icon: <centre/center/left/default>	Moves the icon being shown to the centre or to the default location
icon: none	Hide the icon
icon: size: <num>	Changes the size of the displayed icon to the requested size.
width: <num>	Changes the width of the window maintaining the current position.
height: <num>	Changes the height of the window maintaining the current position.
position: <position>	Changes the window position. One of top, bottom, left, right, centre or a combination (e.g. topright)
webcontent: <url>	Display content from the specified URL. send webcontent: none to reset
video: <<path/url>	Display a video from the specified path or URL. send video: none to reset
activate:	Activates the dialog window and brings it to the forground.
quit:	Quits dialog with exit code 5

Additional Command line options

The following command line options are also available for use

Command	Action
--commandfile <path>	Lets you provide an alternate path to read status commands from. The default is /var/tmp/dialog.log
--progress <int>	Shows a progress bar with <int> number of increments. The progress bar is updated by sending progress: ... commands to the status log file. e.g. if you launch dialog with --progress 100 then sending a progress: 20 command will set the progress bar 20 increments Specifying no value for <int> will start the progress bar in indeterminate mode with a default step count of 100
--blurscreen	Will blur out the screen contents behind the dialog window making them unavailable
--button1disabled	Will disable button1 on launch