[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: dbus-core 0.9

John Millikin jmillikin at gmail.com
Sat Jul 23 08:29:01 CEST 2011

D-Bus implementation for Haskell (dbus-core_0.9)

This is the first significant release to dbus-core in a while, and it contains
some significant improvements to both the API and implementation. Users are
advised to upgrade, as the 0.8 branch will no longer be receiving improvements
or corrections.

* Release announcement: https://john-millikin.com/releases/dbus-core/0.9/
* API documentation: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/dbus-core
* Source code (literate PDF):
* Source code (tarball):

Changes in release 0.9

The biggest change in this release is that dbus-client has been merged into
dbus-core. The original purpose of dbus-client (as a very high-level,
often-updated support library) never materialized, and the split packaging
caused issues with dependencies and versioning. The parts of dbus-client that
were commonly used were moved into the DBus.Client and DBus.Client.Simple
modules. Users are highly encouraged to use these modules in their applications.

Other changes and improvements include:

* The Array, Dictionary, and Structure types are no longer needed for most
  users. You can cast containers directly to corresponding standard types,
  such as Vector and Map.

* Smart constructors for magic strings have been renamed so they're easier to
  read and type; for example, mkBusName is now just busName.

* Support for custom transports and authentication mechanisms.

* Removed some seldom-used modules, such as MatchRule and NameReservation.
  Their functionality has been merged into the new client modules.

* Performance improvements for marshaling and unmarshaling messages.

How to use the new simple client API

The new API makes calling and exporting methods very easy; take a look at
these examples!

Getting a list of connected clients

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
module Main (main) where
import Data.List (sort)
import DBus.Client.Simple

main :: IO ()
main = do
	client <- connectSession
	-- Request a list of connected clients from the bus
	bus <- proxy client "org.freedesktop.DBus" "/org/freedesktop/DBus"
	reply <- call bus "org.freedesktop.DBus" "ListNames" []
	-- org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames returns a single value, which is
	-- a list of names.
	let Just names = fromVariant (reply !! 0)
	-- temporary names.
	mapM_ putStrLn (sort names)

Exporting methods

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
module Main (main) where
import Control.Concurrent (threadDelay)
import Control.Monad (forever)
import DBus.Client.Simple

onEcho :: String -> IO String
onEcho str = do
	putStrLn str
	return str

onDivide :: Double -> Double -> IO Double
onDivide x y = if y == 0
	then throwError "com.example.DivisionByZero" "Divided by zero" []
	else return (x / y)

main :: IO ()
main = do
	client <- connectSession
	-- Request a unique name on the bus. If the name is already
	-- in use, continue without it.
	requestName client "com.example.ExportExample" []
	-- Export an example object at "/divide"
	export client "/divide"
		[ method "com.example.Echo" "Echo" onEcho
		, method "com.example.Math" "Divide" onDivide
	-- Wait forever for method calls
	forever (threadDelay 50000)

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