Driving Konqueror From Scripts: kfmclient

Introduction

kfmclient is a small utility for communicating with Konqueror from the command line, or from scripts. It can control Konqueror to a high degree using an API similar to that provided to C++ programmers by the Konqueror class. kfmclient is part of the kdebase package, so you can rely on it's presence on any system running KDE. The reason why it's still named kfmclient and not konqclient is so that scripts written for KDE 1.x still run with KDE 2.x Note that all this help is also available from kfmclient itself, if you run kfmclient --commands

Commands

All commands have the general form kfmclient command parameters.

kfmclient openURL 'url' ['mimetype']

Opens a window showing 'url'. 'url' may be a relative path or file name, such as . or subdir/. If 'url' is omitted, $HOME is used instead.

If 'mimetype' is specified, it will be used to determine the component that Konqueror should use. For instance, set it to text/html for a web page, to make it appear faster.

kfmclient newTab 'url' ['mimetype']

Same as above but opens a new tab with 'url' in an existing Konqueror window on the current active desktop if possible.

kfmclient openProfile 'profile' ['url']

Opens a window using the given profile. 'profile' is a file under share/apps/konqueror/profiles (globally or locally). 'url' is an optional URL to open.

kfmclient openProperties 'url'

Opens a properties menu.

kfmclient exec 'url' ['binding']

Tries to execute 'url'. 'url' may be a usual URL, this URL will be opened. You may omit 'binding'. In this case the default binding is tried. Of course URL maybe the URL of a document, or it may be a *.desktop file. This way you could for example mount a device by passing 'Mount default' as binding to 'cdrom.desktop'

kfmclient move 'src' 'dest'

Moves the URL 'src' to 'dest'. 'src' may be a list of URLs.

kfmclient download ['src']

Copies the URL 'src' to a user specified location'. 'src' may be a list of URLs, if not present then a URL will be requested.

kfmclient copy 'src' 'dest' Copies the URL 'src' to 'dest'. 'src' may be a list of URLs.

kfmclient sortDesktop

Rearranges all icons on the desktop.

kfmclient configure

Re-read Konqueror's configuration.

kfmclient configureDesktop

Re-read kdesktop's configuration.

Examples:

kfmclient exec file:/root/Desktop/cdrom.desktop "Mount"

Mounts the CDROM

kfmclient exec file:/home/weis/data/test.html

Opens the file with default binding.

kfmclient exec file:/home/weis/data/test.html Netscape

Opens the file with netscape

kfmclient exec ftp://localhost/

Opens new window with URL

kfmclient exec file:/root/Desktop/emacs.desktop

Starts emacs

kfmclient exec file:/root/Desktop/cdrom.desktop

Opens the CD-ROM's mount directory

kfmclient exec .

Opens the current directory. Very convenient.

Usage example

Here is a simple example of how you can use the kfmclient interface. It is a simple shell script to open a kfm window in the current working directory (I call this script "here").

 #!/bin/sh
 exec kfmclient openURL .