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Use YAD/Zenity dialogues to populated variables in a bash script? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I am learning some bash scripting.

I am interested to learn about getting input for my scripts via a GUI interface. It seems that yad (forked from zenity) is the most robust tool for this. (But if there is a better choice I would like to hear about it too.)

Is it possible to obtain 2 or more named variables using yad? Not just getting the values based on their positions ($1, $2, etc), with awk. See "What doesn't work" spoiler for those.

What doesn't workI find how to obtain one named variable, for example:

inputStr=$(zenity --entry --title="My Title" --text="My Text:")

I also find solutions relying on opening single-variable dialogues sequentially but that's a terrible interface.

Everything else relies on chopping up the output with awk or based on the positions, $1, $2, $3 etc. In this script $jpgfile is obtained:

jpgfile=$(echo $OUTPUT | awk 'BEGIN {FS="," } { print $1 }')

This seems unmanageable because adding a new field or failing to provide input for a field will both change the output order of every subsequent value. It's way too fragile.

For a simple example, I want to ask the user for a file name and some content. Creating the dialogue is like this:

yad --title "Create a file" --form --field="File name" --field="Content"

If you fill both fields the output in the terminal is file|this is some text|. How do I get them into variables like $filename and $filecontent? So then I can finish the script like this:

touch "$filename"
echo "$filecontent" > $filename

Is this possible??? I do not find it anywhere. I looked though all kinds of websites like YAD Guide, yad man page, smokey01. Maybe I missed something. On yaddemo I read about bash arrays and it seemed to come close but I couldn't quite piece it together.

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[–] Flyswat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you fill both fields the output in the terminal is file|this is some text|

Wouldn't it be easy to get them using awk by defining | as a field separator?

[–] linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago

It is the only solution I found. I described it in the post but put it behind a "spoiler" "What doesn't work" to make the post shorter.

This seems unmanageable because adding a new field or failing to provide input for a field will both change the output order of every subsequent value. It's way too fragile.

[–] somethingsomethingidk@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

I have an array based solution but it doesn't solve the cases of changing the order or empty fields.

[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Try something like IFS='|' read f1 f2 < <(zenity <...>) where f1, f2 etc. are variable names.

[–] linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago

If you leave some of the field blank will it be able to skip assigning the respective variable? That's one problem with the positional values.

[–] yianiris@kafeneio.social 1 points 10 months ago

Did I miss what you are asking or is this it?

cat /etc/mtab 2>&1 | tee /tmp/tab.txt | yad --title="output" --width=154 \
--text="$(cat /tmp/tab.txt)

@linuxPIPEpower

[–] yianiris@kafeneio.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

grep sda /etc/mtab 2>&1 tee /tmp/tab.txt | yad --title="output" \ --width=154 --text="$(cat /tmp/tab.txt)"

@linuxPIPEpower

[–] linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure if that is working properly on my system. It opens a dialogue box that just has content "" with cancel/ok buttons .

I tried populating a file tab.txt with a few lines because I am not sure if my results from the first part are what's expected, which is 1 line. No matter what the content the best I can do is get the first line to show in the dialogue but not in an interactive way.

Tbh having a bit of a hard time following what's going on with 2>&1 tee. But I am not sure how it could be the right thing as I don't see more than input?

What I want is to open a dialogue like this:

yad --title "Create a file" --form --field="File name" --field="Content

where the user's input gets directed to some sort of structure. Like an argument As though you had a terminal script with the syntax scriptname --filename="file.txt" --content="red green blue".