hs.distributednotifications.md

docs » hs.distributednotifications

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Interact with NSDistributedNotificationCenter There are many notifications posted by parts of OS X, and third party apps, which may be interesting to react to using this module.

You can discover the notifications that are being posted on your system with some code like this:

foo = hs.distributednotifications.new(function(name, object, userInfo) print(string.format("name: %s\nobject: %s\nuserInfo: %s\n", name, object, hs.inspect(userInfo))) end)
foo:start()

Note that distributed notifications are expensive - they involve lots of IPC. Also note that they are not guaranteed to be delivered, particularly if the system is very busy.

API Overview

• Functions - API calls offered directly by the extension
• post
• Constructors - API calls which return an object, typically one that offers API methods
• new
• Methods - API calls which can only be made on an object returned by a constructor
• start
• stop

API Documentation

Functions

post

Signature	hs.distributednotifications.post(name[, sender[, userInfo]])
Type	Function
Description	Sends a distributed notification
Parameters	name - A string containing the name of the notification sender - An optional string containing the name of the sender of the notification (in the form com.domain.application.foo). Defaults to nil. userInfo - An optional table containing additional information to post with the notification. Defaults to nil.

Constructors

new

Signature	hs.distributednotifications.new(callback[, name[, object]]) -> object
Type	Constructor
Description	Creates a new NSDistributedNotificationCenter watcher
Parameters	callback - A function to be called when a matching notification arrives. The function should accept one argument: notificationName - A string containing the name of the notification name - An optional string containing the name of notifications to watch for. A value of nil will cause all notifications to be watched on macOS versions earlier than Catalina. Defaults to nil. object - An optional string containing the name of sending objects to watch for. A value of nil will cause all sending objects to be watched. Defaults to nil.
Returns	An hs.distributednotifications object
Notes	On Catalina and above, it is no longer possible to observe all notifications - the name parameter is effectively now required. See https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/04/nsdistributednotificationcenter-no-longer-supports-nil-names

Methods

start

Signature	hs.distributednotifications:start() -> object
Type	Method
Description	Starts a NSDistributedNotificationCenter watcher
Parameters	None
Returns	The hs.distributednotifications object

stop

Signature	hs.distributednotifications:stop() -> object
Type	Method
Description	Stops a NSDistributedNotificationCenter watcher
Parameters	None
Returns	The hs.distributednotifications object