• Rust bindings for libnotify
  • Structure
  • Add to project
  • Dependencies
  • Why?
  • AI use
  • Roadmap

Rust bindings for libnotify

This crate exposes a user friendly (at least I hope), Rust api for libnotify. Made using bindgen.

Structure

Project is split into two modules:

• functions
• notifications

Which resembles libnotify structure. Every function is named similarly to its libnotify counterpart and it does the same things.

There are some helper structs and enums to make it more approachable to rust folks.

Documentation

Available at github pages;

Add to project

Type in:

cargo add --git "https://github.com/szymon-jozef/libnotify-rs"

Dependencies

To use this crate you need to have installed:

• libnotify, duh
• clang for bindgen
• pkg-config, to find the above

Examples

Refer to examples dir

Sneak peek for making a notification:

use libnotify_rs::{
    functions::{init, uninit},
    notification::Notification,
};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    init("I love coffee")?;
    let mut notify = Notification::new(
        "Remember to drink coffe!",
        "Coffee is very important for your mental health!",
        None,
    )?;

    notify.set_timeout(libnotify_rs::notification::Timeout::Custom(1000 * 10)); // 10 secs
    notify.set_urgency(libnotify_rs::notification::Urgency::Critical); // coffee is very important
    notify.set_category("Coffee")?;

    notify.show()?;

    uninit();

    Ok(())
}

To test those examples use:

cargo r --example <example name>

Why?

Why write this when there is already rust-libnotify?

Two reasons:

• That crate is really, really old. Almost a decade old, as of now. This crate is not old.
• Rust-libnotify doesn't support setting callbacks.

I decided to write these bindings, when I thought the original doesn't support settings notification urgency level. Then I realised it did, but the project was fun, so I decided to finish it.

Why not notify-rust? Well, I found it yesterday, that's why. But it looks great! You should definitely check it out. This crate is just a thin wrapper around libnotify c-calls.

AI use

AI was used only for two things:

• Code review
• As a faster search engine

It didn't write any of the actual code, nor any documentation.

Roadmap

I will be happy to fix any bugs that you may find! Just create a new issue, or better yet a pull request.

I'm thinking about a small wrapper around other code, which would initialize libnotify by itself, cleanup after itself, etc. Maybe someday…