SimpleDBus is a Lua library which enables you to write simple scripts to act on signals, send signals, call methods on remote objects and export your own objects to DBus.

SimpleDBus implements a simple poll()-based main loop so scripts can act asynchronously over several busses at the same time.

Get the sources and do

make
make PREFIX=/usr install

This will install the files core.so in /usr/lib/lua/5.1/simpledbus and simpledbus.lua in /usr/share/lua/5.1. Have a look at the makefiles if this isn't right for your system.

Instead of make you can use make allinone to compile all the code in one go. This produces a slightly smaller library.

Alternatively you can use luarocks and just type luarocks make in the source directory.

Make sure you have installed the dbus and expat libraries and their development packages on systems where they are separate. The build process also requires pkgconfig to set up paths for the dbus headers.

Here is a sample script:

-- import the module
SimpleDBus = require 'simpledbus'

-- initialise and get a handle for the session bus
bus = assert(SimpleDBus.SessionBus())

-- connect to the client connected at org.freedesktop.DBus
-- and get a proxy for the object /org/freedesktop/DBus
DBus = assert(bus:auto_proxy('org.freedesktop.DBus', '/org/freedesktop/DBus'))

-- call a method and print the results nicely
print 'Connections to the session bus:'
for i, s in ipairs(assert(DBus:ListNames())) do
   print(('%4i: %s'):format(i, s))
end

-- register interest in the signal from the
-- object /org/lua/SimpleDBus/Test implementing
-- the interface org.lua.SimpleDBus.TestSignal
-- called Signal
bus:register_signal(
   '/org/lua/SimpleDBus/Test',
   'org.lua.SimpleDBus.TestSignal',
   'Signal',
   function(arg1)
      print('Signal: ' .. tostring(arg1))

      if arg1 == 'stop' then
         SimpleDBus.stop()
      end
   end)

-- now run the main loop and wait for signals to arrive
assert(SimpleDBus.mainloop(bus))

Use the command dbus-send --session --type=signal /org/lua/SimpleDBus/Test org.lua.SimpleDBus.TestSignal.Signal string:stop or run stop.lua in the examples directory to stop this script in a nice way.

For more examples look in the examples directory in the source tree.

SimpleDBus is free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

Please send bug reports, patches, feature requests, praise and general gossip to me, Emil Renner Berthing esmil@mailme.dk.