how can i use it to give the list in dmenu?

[niksingh710]

is there any way i can list the clipboard content in a dmenu then select one and now that is the current clipboard selection?

[Slackadays]

@niksingh710 you might have to make a script to do this because there's no built in way to do this with just dmenu.

however, that script might not be too hard to do because all you need is a way to parse JSON and then select the results.

here's a quick command I just whipped up that lets you select all current text clipboard contents and then send it to the main clipboard:

cb st | jq -r '.[]' | dmenu | cb

this works by:

1. showing all current clipboard contents with cb st (the pipe makes it give JSON)
2. using jq to extract all values from the keys with .[] and then removing the quotes from them with -r
3. sending it to dmenu so you can select which one you want
4. sending the selection to cb to be copied

hope this helps! :)

[niksingh710]

i get this error if there is a png in clipboard or some file.
currently i am using cliphist to acheive this would love if that is possible using this.

[Slackadays]

@niksingh710 fixed in latest commit 291300d, now it won't show that data in JSON but rather what kind of content it is

also, it looks cooler now because of the fancy format that binary content gets

[niksingh710]

Thanks buddy ...... it seems last release was 5 days ago so when to expect this to be added in the release? currently using clipboard-bin from AUR

[Slackadays]

The next release might come in a week or two

[Slackadays]

@niksingh710 next release coming out next Saturday (probably)

also look out for a really cool feature (OSC 52) that will also be in 0.8.0 :)

[niksingh710]

Here is a verbose of my observations.

I am using Arch with wayland (wl-copy is available)

cb copy hi 			# This adds hi in the clipboard list
cb st				# Prints the `hi` entry in cb
cb copy "Hello"		# This should adds Hello in the clipboard list
cb copy "Hello2"	# This should adds Hello2 in the clipboard list
cb st				# This should show 3 entries but only the last entry is shown.

cb copy /path/to/img.png	# This copies the image and lists out the image file name in `cb st`
							# but in dmenu (rofi -dmenu -i) it shows the json array in every line.
cb st | jq -r '.[]' | rofi -dmenu -i

cb history command lists all what i had copied till now but cb st only lists the last entry.

Issues

cb st only listing last entry
cb st if passed in jq gives a full json object for the raw files.

Piping cb command after dmenu gives this

[niksingh710]

can ensure same behaviour for dmenu also. (Just tested)

[Slackadays]

ok, so it looks like you can fix cb st if passed in jq gives a full json object for the raw files by doing cb st | jq -r '.[] | select(type=="string")' to only select strings from the json.

for cb history, you can do cb hs | jq -r '.[].content | select(type=="string")' to choose the last entries in the history (text only again).

however, I don't know if cb st only listing last entry can be fixed because I can't think of a good UX that would make this work, but if you have an idea, I would be happy to add it

[niksingh710]

Okay!!
So this does kinda work but does not fulfill what I desire for.

Let's take an example application, Telegram.

What I want to achieve?

cb copy /path/to/img.png 		# Copying the img in system clipboard

Then using Ctrl+v to paste that in the gui of telegram opened chat.
Now This is possible if I use wl-copy for the raw file but not if using cb.

And to get text pasted using Ctrl+v I do

 cb hs | jq -r '.[].content | select(type=="string")' | rofi -dmenu -i | tee > (wl-copy) | cb

For the UX part I observed that if using cb st in continues succession it sometimes messes up the terminal prompt and spaces.

In my opinion if UX is considered only on cli part then it can be a bit spacious as help menu feels much compact. This can have it's own discussion topic and i guess creating it a pinned topic or issue for community opinion will be a great option.

[Slackadays]

so it turns out what you want is impossible using 0.8.0, but is super easy if you can compile cb yourself. what you want to do is follow the compile instructions in the readme but BEFORE you build cb, make this change in src/cb/src/actions/status.cpp:

129 - printf("            \"name\": \"%s\",\n", entry.path().filename().string().data());
129 + printf("            \"name\": \"%s\",\n", entry.path().string().data());

then build and then you can use this command to select the files directly:

cb st | jq -r '.[] | if type=="array" then .[].name else . end'

for history, it's the same idea but make this change in src/cb/src/actions/history.cpp instead:

198 - printf("                \"name\": \"%s\",\n", entry.filename().string().data());
198 + printf("                \"name\": \"%s\",\n", entry.string().data());

then you can use this command to select from history:

cb hs | jq -r '.[].content | if type=="array" then .[].name else . end'

I think rofi might offer an option so you don't see the long ugly filepaths every time you use dmenu, but it should work either way

I can try adding multiple entries to cb status for the next version as well as the full filepaths in the json, so stay tuned for that :)