Command Line – Execute a Script When an Application Makes a Notification

command linedbusnotify-send

I searched quiet a bit but all the articles and answers only tell you how to create your own notification. What I want to do is to keep track of all the notifications made by all the applications, and execute a particular script every time a particular notification is made.

I will write my program to do this. All I need help with is how to 'intercept' the notifications.

Best Answer

Use (and identify) notifications to trigger subsequent actions

If we edit the proposed snippet in this very nice answer a bit, we can write the called notification to a file:

dbus-monitor "interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications'" | grep --line-buffered "string" | grep --line-buffered -e method -e ":" -e '""' -e urgency -e notify -v | grep --line-buffered '.*(?=string)|(?<=string).*' -oPi | grep --line-buffered -v '^\s*$' | xargs -I '{}' echo {} > file.txt

or otherwise use it to trigger subsequent actions.

An example

If we edit the snippet to run a script when a notification pops up:

dbus-monitor "interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications'" | grep --line-buffered "string" | grep --line-buffered -e method -e ":" -e '""' -e urgency -e notify -v | grep --line-buffered '.*(?=string)|(?<=string).*' -oPi | grep --line-buffered -v '^\s*$' | xargs -I '{}' /bin/bash /path/to/script.sh {}

and script.sh is:

#!/bin/bash
string=$1
match="een aap op een fiets"
if [[ $string == $match ]]
  then
    gedit
fi

Then, every time, if the notification matches "een aap op een fiets":

gedit will open :)

Note

Although the code works perfectly to intercept the notification to trigger any kind of action, I found no way to identify the pid that called the notification.

Related Solutions

Command-Line – How to Write a Shell Script to Install a List of Applications

I would assume the script would look something like this:

#!/bin/sh
apt-get update  # To get the latest package lists
apt-get install <package name> -y
#etc.

Just save that as something like install_my_apps.sh, change the file's properties to make it executable, and run it from the command line as root.

(Edit: The -y tells apt-get not to prompt you and just get on with installing)

Ubuntu – How to setup a timer based notification

Since I couldn't use dbus-send I wrote a python script instead. The pynotify module internally uses the dbus API. For extra kicks I added a fortune cookie in the message. Works like a charm:

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""python 2.7 script that creates a notification using pynotify. It shows the current time and a small fortune cookie"""
try:
  import pynotify
  import time
  import subprocess
  if pynotify.init("Wakeup service"):
    subprocess.Popen(["paplay", "/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/message.ogg"])

    # You can get more stock icons from here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3894763/what-icons-are-available-to-use-when-displaying-a-notification-with-libnotify
    timeStr = time.strftime("%I:%M %p %d %b")
    cookie = subprocess.check_output(["/usr/games/fortune", "-s"])
    n = pynotify.Notification(timeStr, cookie, "/usr/share/app-install/icons/ktimer.png")
    n.set_timeout(1)
    n.show()
  else:
    print "problem initializing the pynotify module"
except Exception as exc:
  print "Exception", exc

I then scheduled this using cron. The crontab entry looks like:

0,30 * * * * DISPLAY=:0 ./local/bin/notify_new.py

Update:Added a method to play a sound using pulse audio