Freedesktop Notifications

This module provide a high-level API for Freedesktop.org Notifications, allowing your program to display a nice and unobstrusive notification popup.

This works on all OS having a support for the spec org.freedesktop.Notifications (mostly Linux desktops: Gnome, KDE, Enlightment, XFCE, etc).

This does NOT rely on libnotify, it deals directly with D-Bus.

Most node library providing Freedesktop.org Notifications are in fact spawning a new process, then executing the command line utility notify-send, which is super-slow and does not provide all of Freedesktop.org Notifications features, like buttons.

Getting started!

This lib is super simple to use, here is the most common use-case:

const notifications = require( 'freedesktop-notifications' ) ;

new notifications.Notification( {
	summary: 'Hello world!' ,
	body: 'This is a <i>Hello world</i> sample code. <b>Thanks for your attention...</b>' ,
	icon: 'appointment-new' ,
} ).push() ;

This will display an unobstrusive notification popup with "Hello world!" as the title, and a body message featuring italic and bold markup.

Note that the org.freedesktop.Notifications spec only support italic, bold and underline. HTML link are said to be working, but they are not implemented at the moment (tested on the latest Gnome desktop).

Also note that icon can be either a full path to an image, or a stock image existing on your desktop environment.

Here another example featuring buttons and event listeners:

const notifications = require( 'freedesktop-notifications' ) ;

var notif = new notifications.Notification( {
	summary: 'Hello world!' ,
	body: 'This is a <i>Hello world</i> sample code. <b>Thanks for your attention...</b>' ,
	icon: __dirname + '/log.png' ,
	"sound-file": __dirname + '/hiss.wav' ,
	actions: {
		default: '' ,
		ok: 'OK!' ,
		nope: 'Nope!'
	}
} ) ;

notif.on( 'action' , function( action ) {
	console.log( "Action '%s' was clicked!" , action ) ;
} ) ;

notif.on( 'close' , function( closedBy ) {
	console.log( "Closed by: '%s'" , closedBy ) ;
} ) ;

notif.push() ;

This popup will have two buttons: 'OK!' and 'Nope!'.

The default action does not create a button, it is the default action produced when the user click the notification itself, but not any button.

If the user click the notification, the action event will be emitted with either 'default', 'ok' or 'nope'.

The close event will be emitted when the notification is closed. If an action event was emitted, the close event will be emitted after.

If the user close the notification (using the close button), or if the notification time out, no action event will be emitted.

API reference

Table of content:

• .init()
• .reset()
• .destroy()
• .setAppName()
• .getAppName()
• .setUnflood()
• .getUnflood()
• .purge()
• .getServerInfo()
• .getCapabilities()
• The Notification class
  • new Notification()
  • .push()
  • .close()
  • .set()
  • Event: action
  • Event: close
• Limitations

.init()

This method will init the lib. Basically, it connects to D-Bus and get the org.freedesktop.Notifications service and interface.

It returns a Promise that resolve once the lib is initialized.

Note that you do not need to call this method, it is automatically called the first time you push a notification or when you try to get some informations out of the server.

.reset()

This method reset the lib, terminating connections with D-Bus. After that, .init() should run again (but init is still done implicitly on the next notification's push).

It returns a Promise that resolve once the lib is reset.

.destroy()

This method will close down the lib, terminating connections with D-Bus. It's the same then .reset() except that it is irreversible, so do it only when you are sure you will never send notification anymore.

It returns a Promise that resolve once the lib is reset.

.setAppName( appName )

• appName string (non-empty) the name of the application

This will configure the application name. The application name is NOT displayed.

.getAppName()

It returns the configured application name.

.setUnflood( value )

• value mixed the unflood timeout, where values:
  • undefined, null, false and negative number: disable the unflood feature
  • true: set the timeout to 0ms
  • positive number: set the timeout to that number in ms

This will configure the unflood feature.

The behaviour of notification servers is undefined when they are flooded. For example, Gnome seems to drop notifications when many of them are sent in a small amount of time. It seems like it can only queue 3 notifications at most.

This feature ensures a delay between notifications to avoid losing some of them.

It is turned off by default.

As a side-effect, when sending a bunch of notifications, a part of the queue is held by your application, so if your application quit or crash unexpectedly, you may lose some notifications. Use .purge() to exit cleanly.

.getUnflood()

It returns the configured unflood value. If the unflood feature is disabled, it returns -1.

.purge()

It disables the unflood feature and send all notifications to the server right now. You may want to use that if you have to quickly quit your application.

.getServerInfo()

It returns a Promise resolving to an object of server informations, where:

• name string the name of the server (e.g. "gnome-shell")
• vendor string the vendor name (e.g. "GNOME")
• version string the version of the server
• specVersion string the version of the org.freedesktop.Notifications spec implemented by the server

.getCapabilities()

It returns a Promise resolving to an array of string containing the server capabilities.

E.g.: [ 'actions', 'body', 'body-markup', 'icon-static', 'persistence', 'sound' ].

From Gnome.org:

• action-icons: Supports using icons instead of text for displaying actions. Using icons for actions must be enabled on a per-notification basis using the action-icons hint.
• actions: The server will provide the specified actions to the user. Even if this cap is missing, actions may still be specified by the client, however the server is free to ignore them.
• body: Supports body text. Some implementations may only show the summary (for instance, onscreen displays, marquee/scrollers)
• body-hyperlinks: The server supports hyperlinks in the notifications.
• body-images: The server supports images in the notifications.
• body-markup: Supports markup in the body text. If marked up text is sent to a server that does not give this cap, the markup will show through as regular text so must be stripped clientside.
• icon-multi: The server will render an animation of all the frames in a given image array. The client may still specify multiple frames even if this cap and/or icon-static is missing, however the server is free to ignore them and use only the primary frame.
• icon-static: Supports display of exactly 1 frame of any given image array. This value is mutually exclusive with icon-multi, it is a protocol error for the server to specify both.
• persistence: The server supports persistence of notifications. Notifications will be retained until they are acknowledged or removed by the user or recalled by the sender. The presence of this capability allows clients to depend on the server to ensure a notification is seen and eliminate the need for the client to display a reminding function (such as a status icon) of its own.
• sound: The server supports sounds on notifications. If returned, the server must support the sound-file and suppress-sound hints.

Notification Class

Instances of this class represent a notification about to be sent.

new Notification( properties )

• properties Object contains the data of the notification, where:
  • summary string the title/summary of the notification
  • body string the body of the notification, supporting HTML tags <b>, <i> and <u>
  • icon string (optional) either a full path to an image, or a stock image existing on your desktop environment, e.g. "appointment-new". See the icon naming spec.
  • sound string (optional) either a full path to a sound file to play when the notification pop up or a themeable named sound from the freedesktop.org sound naming spec to play when the notification pops up. Similar to icon-name, only for sounds. An example would be "message-new-instant".
  • urgency mixed (optional, default to 1/normal) this is the urgency level for this notification, the value can be:
    • 0/low
    • 1/normal
    • 2/critical (critical notification does not timeout)
  • timeout number (optional) the timeout before the notification disappears in ms (rarely implemented by notification servers)
  • appName string (optional) override the global application name
  • category string (optional) a category name, NOT displayed, probably useful for the notification server but not mandatory. Most probably some notification servers will provide filters to users somewhere in the future, and this category would be used for that.
  • actions Object an object of actions, with the action codename as the key and the label of the button (string) as the value, e.g. { ok: 'OK!' , cancel: 'Cancel...' }. Note that default (as the key/codename) is a special case for a click on the notification body itself, so its value/label is ignored.
  • antiLeakTimeout number the timeout in ms before giving up. This defines a period of time after which the notification should be assumed to have timed out. This exists because many notification servers (e.g. Gnome) do not send any event when a notification has actually timed out. See the limitations section to understand what happens behind the scene.
  • fireAndForget boolean the fire and forget mode does not care about what would happend to the notification, it will not hang the script until the notification is closed (or believed closed). Therefore, you cannot listen to 'close' event, and it's incompatible with actions. In fact, the underlying D-Bus connection is closed (except if another non- fire and forget notification is in progress).
  • any other key will be turned into a hint, see the Gnome documentation for the list of all well-known hints

It creates and returns a Notification object having the aforementioned properties.

Notification#set( properties )

• properties Object contains the data of the notification, where:
  • summary string the title/summary of the notification
  • body string the body of the notification, supporting HTML tags <b>, <i> and <u>
  • icon string (optional) either a full path to an image, or a stock image existing on your desktop environment, e.g. "appointment-new". See the icon naming spec.
  • sound string (optional) either a full path to a sound file to play when the notification pop up or a themeable named sound from the freedesktop.org sound naming spec to play when the notification pops up. Similar to icon-name, only for sounds. An example would be "message-new-instant".
  • urgency mixed (optional, default to 1/normal) this is the urgency level for this notification, the value can be:
    • 0/low
    • 1/normal
    • 2/critical (critical notification does not timeout)
  • timeout number (optional) the timeout before the notification disappears in ms (rarely implemented by notification servers)
  • appName string (optional) override the global application name
  • category string (optional) a category name, NOT displayed, probably useful for the notification server but not mandatory. Most probably some notification servers will provide filters to users somewhere in the future, and this category would be used for that.
  • actions Object an object of actions, with the action codename as the key and the label of the button (string) as the value, e.g. { ok: 'OK!' , cancel: 'Cancel...' }. Note that default (as the key/codename) is a special case for a click on the notification body itself, so its value/label is ignored.
  • antiLeakTimeout number the timeout in ms before giving up. This defines a period of time after which the notification should be assumed to have timed out. This exists because many notification servers (e.g. Gnome) do not send any event when a notification has actually timed out. See the limitations section to understand what happens behind the scene.
  • any other key will be turned into a hint, see the Gnome documentation for the list of all well-known hints

Set/reset properties after the Notification object creation.

This accepts exactly the same properties the constructor does.

It returns the notification, so methods can be chained.

Notification#push()

This will send the notification to the notification server so it will be displayed as soon as possible, usually as soon as the previous notification is dismissed. This is totally dependent to your desktop environment (some implementation may allow multiple notifications at the same time, but as far as I know, there is no desktop doing that at the moment).

It returns a promise that resolves once the notification is sent to the server.

Note that you can update a notification that has already been pushed: just modify it using the .set() method, then .push() it again. Also there are some limitations to be aware of.

Notification#close()

This close the notification right now.

It returns a Promise that resolves when the close request is sent to the server, but it is usually sent immediately.

Events

Event: action ( action )

• action string the action ID of the button the user clicked

This event is emitted on a notification when a user as clicked a button or the notification's body (if the default action was set).

The action string can be anything: it is the key of one of the property of the actions property that was passed to the Notification constructor.

Event: close ( closedBy )

• closedBy string the closed reason

This event is emitted when a notification is closed.

The closedBy string indicates the reason why the notification was closed.

It can be one of:

• timeout: the notification has timed out. Note that this code can eventually be sent by the notification server when a notification is closed in favor of a more urgent one.
• user: the user itself closed the notification, either by clicking the notification body, the notification close button or one of the available buttons of the notification.
• client: the client (i.e. the app) closed the notification, this typically happens when your app has called the .close() method on the notification object.
• antiLeak: the antiLeakTimeout has been reached and has closed the notification.

Limitations

Sending a notification in a fire and forget fashion works pretty well.

However, advanced features like buttons are somewhat broken by design in the org.freedesktop.Notifications spec and particularly on notification server implementations.

In fact we are not guaranteed to get a signal when the server time out a notification.

That's it: the notification server can tell you if the user clicked the notification, if a particular button is clicked, or if the user closed the notification, BUT NOT IF THE SERVER HAS TIMED OUT YOUR NOTIFICATION!!!

For fire and forget it's not important, but if you want to send notifications with buttons, that's a real problem: as time pass without any callback triggered by the underlying D-Bus insterface, how do we know if the notification is still displayed and the user is simply away from keyboard (thus an action callback has still a chance to be triggered) or if the notification has been timed out and dismissed by the notification server itself?

Also there is no signal/event telling when a notification is actually displayed on screen, so there is no mechanism to know if the notification is displayed or is still queued.

So you should be aware that:

• as soon as you add one button to your notification, the urgency level is forced to 'critical', because critical notifications never expire
• because we can't detect notification expiration, freedesktop-notifications assumes by default that the notification has expired after 30s for 'low' and 'normal' urgency notification, and after 10 minutes for 'critical' notification: this is important to avoid leaking event listeners like hell. However this can be overridden by setting the property antiLeakTimeout to the appropriate value. When the antiLeakTimeout kick in, a close request is sent to the server, just in case it was still on screen (or queued). This is to avoid to have a dialog with buttons that are not responding anymore.
• you can update a living notification (i.e: a notification currently displayed), but some server (e.g. Gnome) will remove any existing buttons or buttons about to be created (despite the fact that actions are correctly pushed to D-Bus)... so you would probably want to close the notification and create a brand new one if that notification involves buttons.

License

MIT License. See the LICENSE file.