Desktop Notifications from Python Scripts

• In this talk, I will give some background on common dialogs we are used to and how you can add these to your commandline apps
  • Why users like Graphical User Interfaces?
  • How to add GUI to scripts
  • Sending notifications to users
  • Questions
• Questions and Answers

Commandline applications are great because they are fast, easy on resources and allow you to automate repetitive tasks in the terminal. In this talk, I will show you two ways to bring your commandline applications out of the terminal and onto your desktop.

the standard Python interface to the Tk GUI toolkit and is Python's de facto standard GUI.

• GUI toolkits like Tkinter make your application more user friendly
• GUI applications are more visually appealing
• There are many GUI toolkits to choose from e.g PyGtk, PyQt and wxPython.

All GUI toolkits allow us to use standard windows such as these:

File/Directory Selection

Question Boxes

• GUI cannot be used all the time.
• GUIs require more resources
• GUIs require one to write lots of code just for the interface.

Wouldn't it be great if we could "borrow" some of the GUI features and add them to our scripts without turning them into full-featured GUI programs?

a utility used to add GUI forms to scripts and receive feedback from the user.

• Zenity enables you to create various simple dialogs that interact graphically with the user.
• Useful for creating quick scripts that get the job done
• Is installed by default on Ubuntu, and is available on most Linux distributions
• Can be called from Python using the subprocess module
• Alternatively Zenity can be invoked using the PyZenity module.

        
        #!/bin/sh

         zenity --question \
          --text="Are you sure you wish to proceed?"
        
      

         
    #! /usr/bin/env python
    import subprocess as s

    s.call(["zenity","--question","--text=Are you sure?"])
         
       

  #! /usr/bin/env python
  from PyZenity import Question

  cancel = Question('Should I cancel the operation?')

      

notify-send is a program used to send notifications to the user via a notification daemon from the commandline. These notifications can be used to inform the user about an event or display information without getting in the user's way.

• shows pop up notifications
• notifications disappear after a few seconds
• Installed by default in Ubuntu, available for other distros
• notifications are not modal
• lightweight

• For example, notify-send --icon weather-overcast \ "Weather" "Overcast"
• 

      
import subprocess as s

s.call(["notify-send", "--icon", "weather-overcast", \
    "Weather", "Overcast"])
      
    

• Use the subprocess module to call notify-send
• Options are passed as a list

• System icon spec https://specifications.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/latest/ar01s04.html
• Zenity https://help.gnome.org/users/zenity/stable/index.html.en
• notify-send http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/notify-send.1.html
• PyZenity http://brianramos.com/?page_id=38

• Vuyisile Ndlovu
• @terrameijar