i3status_ext

This is a crate which lets you extend the i3status display as described here.

How to use

First add this crate to your dependencies in you Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies]
i3status_ext = "0.1.0-beta.1"

To compile the following sample code you will need to add the clap program arguments crate too.

clap = "3.0.0-beta.2"

Then add the external crate into you extension's source file and call i3status_ext::begin() once and i3status_ext::update() in a loop:

extern crate i3status_ext;
use clap::App;

fn main() {

    // read arguments
    let args = App::new("myext").args(&[
        Arg::new("position")
            .short('p')
            .takes_value(true),
        Arg::new("reverse")
            .short('r'),
    ]);

    // get arguments (with minimal plausibility check)
    let position = args
        .value_of("position")
        .unwrap_or("0")
        .parse::<usize>()
        .unwrap_or(0);
    let reverse = args.is_present("reverse");

    // start reading i3status' output from stdin
    let mut io = i3status_ext::begin();

    // prepare some text to insert
    let my_text = "Hello, World!";

    loop {
        // insert your part into i3status
        i3status_ext::update(&mut io, "my_text", position, reverse, my_text);
    }
}

The i3status process will keep sending you status updates via stdin in which you continue to insert your status item at the wished position.

If you are interested in a more complex example take a look at i3owm which inserts information about the current weather into the i3status.

add your extension to i3 status bar

To activate your extension find the bar definition in your i3 configuration file which usually is placed at ~/.config/i3/config:

bar {
  status_command i3status | my_own_i3status_extension -rp1
}

Reference Documentation

Beside this introduction there is a reference documentation which can be found here.

Links

Website

This README tastes better at i3status_ext.thats-software.com.

github repository

For the source code see this repository at github.com.

on crates.io

Published at crates.io.

License

i3status_ext is licensed under the MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)