Methods
| CreateChannel | (o: Account, a{sv}: Requested_Properties, x: User_Action_Time, s: Preferred_Handler) | → | o: Request | |
| EnsureChannel | (o: Account, a{sv}: Requested_Properties, x: User_Action_Time, s: Preferred_Handler) | → | o: Request |
Properties
| Interfaces | as (DBus_Interface_List) | Read only |
Description
The channel dispatcher is responsible for responding to new channels and launching client processes to handle them. It also provides functionality for client processes to request that new channels are created.
If a channel dispatcher is running, it is responsible for dispatching new channels on all Connections created by the AccountManager. Connections not created by the AccountManager are outside the scope of the channel dispatcher.
Connections created by standalone Telepathy clients that do not intend to interact with the channel dispatcher should be ignored - otherwise, the channel dispatcher would try to launch handlers for channels that the standalone client was already handling internally.
The current channel dispatcher is defined to be the process that
owns the well-known bus name
org.freedesktop.Telepathy.ChannelDispatcher on
the session bus. This process MUST export an object with this
interface at the object path
/org/freedesktop/Telepathy/ChannelDispatcher.
Until a mechanism exists for making a reasonable automatic choice of ChannelDispatcher implementation, implementations SHOULD NOT register as an activatable service for the ChannelDispatcher's well-known bus name. Instead, it is RECOMMENDED that some component of the user's session will select and activate a particular implementation, and that other Telepathy-enabled programs can detect whether channel request/dispatch functionality is available by checking whether the ChannelDispatcher's well-known name is in use at runtime.
There are three categories of client process defined by this specification:
- Observer
Observers monitor the creation of new channels. This functionality can be used for things like message logging. All observers are notified simultaneously.
- Approver
-
Approvers notify the user that new channels have been created, and also select which channel handler will be used for the channel, either by asking the user or by choosing the most appropriate channel handler.
- Handler
-
Each new channel or set of channels is passed to exactly one handler as its final destination. A typical channel handler is a user interface process handling channels of a particular type.
Methods
CreateChannel (o: Account, a{sv}: Requested_Properties, x: User_Action_Time, s: Preferred_Handler) → o: Request
Parameters
- Account — o
- Requested_Properties — a{sv} (Qualified_Property_Value_Map)
- User_Action_Time — x (Unix_Timestamp64)
- Preferred_Handler — s (DBus_Well_Known_Name)
A dictionary containing desirable properties. This has the same semantics as the corresponding parameter to Connection.Interface.Requests.CreateChannel.
Certain properties will not necessarily make sense in this dictionary: for instance, TargetHandle can only be given if the requester is able to interact with a Connection to the desired account.
The time at which user action occurred, or 0 if this channel
request is for some reason not involving user action.
The UserActionTime
property will be set to this value, and it will eventually be
passed as the User_Action_Time parameter of HandleChannels.
Either the well-known bus name (starting with
org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.)
of the preferred handler for this
channel, or an empty string to indicate that any handler would be
acceptable. The channel dispatcher SHOULD dispatch as many as
possible of the resulting channels (ideally, all of them)
to that handler—irrespective of whether that handler's HandlerChannelFilter
matches the channel—and SHOULD remember the preferred handler
so it can try to dispatch subsequent channels in the same bundle
to the same handler.
This must be the well-known bus name, not the unique name, to ensure that all handlers do indeed have the Client API, and the Client object on the handler can be located easily.
This is partly so the channel dispatcher can call HandleChannels on it, and partly so the channel dispatcher can recover state if it crashes and is restarted.
The filter should be disregarded for ease of use of this interface: clients will usually use this argument to request channels be sent to themself, and this should trump the filter not matching. This also allows a client to become the handler for a channel produced by one of its own requests, while not being a candidate to handle other channels of that type.
If this is a well-known bus name and the handler has the Requests interface, the channel dispatcher SHOULD call AddRequest on that Handler after this method has returned.
This ordering allows a Handler which calls CreateChannel with itself as the preferred handler to associate the call to AddRequest with that call.
This is copied to the ChannelRequest that is returned, as the PreferredHandler property.
Returns
- Request — o
Start a request to create a channel. This initially just creates a ChannelRequest object, which can be used to continue the request and track its success or failure.
The request can take a long time - in the worst case, the channel dispatcher has to ask the account manager to put the account online, the account manager has to ask the operating system to obtain an Internet connection, and the operating system has to ask the user whether to activate an Internet connection using an on-demand mechanism like dialup.
This means that using a single D-Bus method call and response to represent the whole request will tend to lead to that call timing out, which is not the behaviour we want.
If this method is called for an Account that is disabled, invalid or otherwise unusable, no error is signalled until ChannelRequest.Proceed is called, at which point ChannelRequest.Failed is emitted with an appropriate error.
This means there's only one code path for errors, apart from InvalidArgument for "that request makes no sense".
It also means that the request will proceed if the account is enabled after calling CreateChannel, but before calling Proceed.
Possible Errors
- Invalid Argument
org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.,
the Account does not exist, or one of the Requested_Properties
is invalid
EnsureChannel (o: Account, a{sv}: Requested_Properties, x: User_Action_Time, s: Preferred_Handler) → o: Request
Parameters
- Account — o
- Requested_Properties — a{sv} (Qualified_Property_Value_Map)
- User_Action_Time — x (Unix_Timestamp64)
- Preferred_Handler — s (DBus_Well_Known_Name)
A dictionary containing desirable properties. This has the same semantics as the corresponding parameter to Connection.Interface.Requests.EnsureChannel.
Certain properties will not necessarily make sense in this dictionary: for instance, TargetHandle can only be given if the requester is able to interact with a Connection to the desired account.
The time at which user action occurred, or 0 if this channel request is for some reason not involving user action.
This parameter is used in the same way as the corresponding parameter to CreateChannel.
Either the well-known bus name (starting with
org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.)
of the preferred handler for this
channel, or an empty string to indicate that any handler would be
acceptable. The behaviour and rationale are the same as for the
corresponding parameter to
CreateChannel, except as noted
here.
If any new channels are created in response to this
request, the channel dispatcher SHOULD dispatch as many as
possible of the resulting channels (ideally, all of them)
to that handler, and SHOULD remember the preferred handler
so it can try to dispatch subsequent channels in the same bundle
to the same handler. If the requested channel already exists (that
is, Connection.Interface.Requests.EnsureChannel
returns Yours=False) then the channel dispatcher
SHOULD re-dispatch the channel to its existing handler, and MUST
NOT dispatch it to this client (unless it is the existing handler);
the request is still deemed to have succeeded in this case.
An address book application, for example, might call EnsureChannel
to ensure that a text channel with a particular contact is
displayed to the user; it does not care whether a new channel was
made. An IM client might call EnsureChannel
in response to the user double-clicking an entry in the contact
list, with itself as the Preferred_Handler; if the
user already has a conversation with that contact in another
application, they would expect the existing window to be
presented, rather than their double-click leading to an error
message. So the request should succeed, even if its
Preferred_Handler is not used.
Returns
- Request — o
Start a request to ensure that a channel exists, creating it if necessary. This initially just creates a ChannelRequest object, which can be used to continue the request and track its success or failure.
If this method is called for an Account that is disabled, invalid or otherwise unusable, no error is signalled until ChannelRequest.Proceed is called, at which point ChannelRequest.Failed is emitted with an appropriate error.
The rationale is as for CreateChannel.
Possible Errors
- Invalid Argument
org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.,
the Account does not exist, or one of the Requested_Properties
is invalid