Development/Tutorials/Plasma4/Ruby/SimplePasteApplet

Warning: This tutorial has not yet been completely tested and might contain incorrect information or examples.

Abstract

This tutorial will explain how to make simple KDE Plasma applet using Ruby. The applet will be a simple version of the paste applet. It will allow the user to put a bit of text on the clipboard.

Getting started

Before you get started you need to make sure to have the following installed on your computer.

• KDE 4.2
• Ruby 1.8
• KDE 4.2 Ruby bindings

These packages can usually be installed through your distributions package manager.

Package layout

Plasma applets written in Ruby can be distributed as a plasmoid package. A minimal Ruby plasmoid package has the following structure:

• contents/
  • code/
    • main.rb
• metadata.desktop

The Ruby code for the plasmoid should be put in a file called main.rb in the contents/code folder of your package. The metadata.desktop file holds metadata about your plasmoid. This includes your name, name of your applet and a description. The metadata.desktop file is in the common .desktop file format, which looks a lot like an old INI file.

A minimal metadata.desktop file looks like this:

[Desktop Entry] Name=Simple Ruby applet Comment=This is a simple applet written in Ruby Icon=chronometer Type=Service ServiceTypes=Plasma/Applet

X-Plasma-API=ruby-script X-Plasma-MainScript=code/main.rb

X-KDE-PluginInfo-Author=Me [email protected] X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name=ruby-test X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=0.1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Website=http://plasma.kde.org/ X-KDE-PluginInfo-Category=Examples X-KDE-PluginInfo-Depends= X-KDE-PluginInfo-License=GPL X-KDE-PluginInfo-EnabledByDefault=true

Code

Let's first start with the most basic Ruby applet and work from there. Every Plasma applet you're going to make in Ruby has to have a class which inherits the PlasmaScripting::Applet class. You can think of this as your main class for your applet. It will always have at least two methods, initialize and init. While these two seem very similar, there is an important difference. The initialize method is Ruby's default constructor. It will be called by the Ruby interpreter when an object of your class gets initialized (a.k.a. constructed). The init method gets called by Plasma. Plasma calls this method after the applet has been loaded. You can therefore assume that everything is set up when init is called, while with initialize, you only know your applet class is ready.

Start your code file with requiring 'plasma_applet' and opening a module. A minimal Ruby Plasma applet looks like this:

require 'plasma_applet'

module RubyTest

 class Main < PlasmaScripting::Applet
   def initialize parent
     super parent
   end

   def init
     set_minimum_size 150, 150
   end
 end

end

The module name must match the name you specify in metadata.desktop on the X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name line. The name ruby-test translates to a module name of RubyTest.

The only line in the init method now is set_minimum_size. This, as the name suggests, sets the minimum size for the applet.

To run your applet, you first need to install it. This is where plasmapkg comes in. It's a small tool which installs and upgrades Plasma packages. To put your code in a package, create a package structure as described in the above section. Outsize the package folder run plasmapkg -i <package folder name>. Plasmapkg will now install your applet.

mkdir ruby-test-applet cd ruby-test-applet

1. Copy or create metadata.desktop

mkdir contents cd contents mkdir code cd code

1. Copy or create main.rb

cd ../../.. plasmapkg -i ruby-test-applet

Now that your applet is installed, you can view it. You can do this with a tool called plasmoidviewer. As argument it takes the name of your plasma applet specified with X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name in the metadata.desktop file. Launch plasmoidviewer and see your still empty Plasma applet running.

plasmoidviewer ruby-test

plasmapkg can install and upgrade Plasma packages. Since you've now installed your applet, you need to upgrade it after making changes. This isn't much different then installing, just use the -u commandline switch instead of -i.

A label on an applet

When you have a very basic applet running, you can go two ways. You can put QWidgets on your applet, or draw the applet yourself by implementing the paintInterface method. I like to use standard widgets most of the time, so we're going to place some QWidgets on the plasma applet.

Plasma has a couple of themed widgets. A list can be found in the Plasma API. To place these widgets on your applet, you need a layout. The layout you'll be using most of the time will be the GraphicsLinearLayout, which basically puts your widgets in a horizontal or vertical line.

When putting a Plasma::Label on an applet in a GraphicsLinearLayout, you'll get the following code:

require 'plasma_applet'

module RubyTest

 class Main < PlasmaScripting::Applet
   def initialize parent
     super parent
     @parent = parent
   end

   def init
     set_minimum_size 150, 150

     label = Plasma::Label.new @parent.applet
     label.text = 'This is a label on a plasmoid, hello Plasma!'

     layout = Qt::GraphicsLinearLayout.new @parent.applet
     @parent.applet.layout = layout
     layout.add_item label
   end
 end

end

To place widgets on the applet, we need the applet's parent. This parent has a method called applet, which gives us a reference to the 'real' applet. To get to this applet, we save the parent in a instance variable. In the init method we create a Plasma::Label and assign it a text. Next we create a GraphicsLinearLayout, assign it to the applet and put our label on it.

Tip

In Ruby, instance variables always begin with an '@' character. All variables without an '@' are local variables. Variables with two @ signs are class (a.k.a. static) variables.

To view your applet, run plasmapkg -u <folder name> and plasmoidviewer <plasmoid name>.

plasmapkg -u ruby-test-applet plasmoidviewer ruby-test

This will show you a nice and simple Hello World in Plasma.

A line edit and a button

Let's continue by adding a line edit and a button with some functionality.

Before that, let's do a small clean up. In the previous example we used @parent.applet a lot. We can clean this up by defining a method called applet which returns @parent.applet.

def applet

 @parent.applet

end

Note

With Ruby, it's not required to write the return keyword. This can be a bit confusing for newcomers. But it can make a method very clear, I think the applet method is a good example of such a case. You are of course, free to put a return in front of the single line in the method.

To add a line edit widget we can use the Plasma::LineEdit class. This class is a basic KLineEdit (a text field with one line) themed for Plasma. To add it to our applet, we do the same as with the label. But since we want the line edit to be empty, we don't set a text.

Next is a push button. We can use the Plasma::PushButton class for that. Adding it is exactly the same as adding the label.

With a line edit and button in place, we should let the button do something when it's clicked. Qt, the library on which KDE is based, uses a mechanism called 'signals and slots'. You could compare it to action or event handlers in other languages or frameworks. Normally, one would connect a certain signal (event) to a certain slot (event handler method). Since we're using Ruby, we can't only do that, we can connect a signal to a code block. The syntax for this is easy:

button.connect(SIGNAL(:clicked)) do

 # do something

end

Now, when the button gets clicked, the code in the block gets executed.

Tip

The Ruby language has the concept of code blocks. These are anonymous functions which you can supply to a method. A code block gets executed when the receiving method calls it.

We will do something simple when the button gets pressed. Qt makes it very easy to put some text on the clipboard, so let's do that. To put text on the clipboard we need Qt::Application.clipboard. This object has the very convenient method text= which puts text on the clipboard.

Putting it all together, we have to following code:

require 'plasma_applet'

module RubyTest

 class Main < PlasmaScripting::Applet
   def initialize parent
     super parent
     @parent = parent
   end

   def applet
     @parent.applet
   end

   def init
     set_minimum_size 150, 150

     layout = Qt::GraphicsLinearLayout.new Qt::Vertical, applet
     applet.layout = layout

     label = Plasma::Label.new applet
     label.text = 'This plasmoid will copy the text you enter below to the clipboard.'
     layout.add_item label

     line_edit = Plasma::LineEdit.new applet
     layout.add_item line_edit

     button = Plasma::PushButton.new applet
     button.text = 'Copy to clipboard'
     layout.add_item button

     button.connect(SIGNAL(:clicked)) do
       Qt::Application.clipboard.text = line_edit.text
     end
   end

 end

end

Where to go from here

Now that you have this simple but working Ruby Plasma applet, you can expand it. You can start by trying out some of the other Plasma widgets available. The official Plasma API is unfortunately written for C++. But with a little imagination and some logic you should be able to make use of it.

You could also try looking at some Ruby Plasma examples[4]. These are written a bit different then the example described above, but they should still be useful.

If you have any questions about Plasma development there are several ways to ask for help. First of all there is the Plasma mailinglist. Secondly you can hop by on IRC, #plasma on irc.freenode.org. As a third option you could try asking you question on the KDE forums.

Good luck, and don't forget to publish your Plasma applet on kde-look.org!