i3/docs/ipc

IPC interface (interprocess communication)
==========================================
Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
March 2010

This document describes how to interface with i3 from a separate process. This
is useful for example to remote-control i3 (to write test cases for example) or
to get various information like the current workspaces to implement an external
workspace bar.

The method of choice for IPC in our case is a unix socket because it has very
little overhead on both sides and is usually available without headaches in
most languages. In the default configuration file, the ipc-socket gets created
in +/tmp/i3-%u/ipc-socket.%p+ where +%u+ is your UNIX username and +%p+ is the
PID of i3.

All i3 utilities, like +i3-msg+ and +i3-input+ will read the +I3_SOCKET_PATH+
X11 property, stored on the X11 root window.

== Establishing a connection

To establish a connection, simply open the IPC socket. The following code
snippet illustrates this in Perl:

-------------------------------------------------------------
use IO::Socket::UNIX;
my $sock = IO::Socket::UNIX->new(Peer => '/tmp/i3-ipc.sock');
-------------------------------------------------------------

== Sending messages to i3

To send a message to i3, you have to format in the binary message format which
i3 expects. This format specifies a magic string in the beginning to ensure
the integrity of messages (to prevent follow-up errors). Following the magic
string comes the length of the payload of the message as 32-bit integer, and
the type of the message as 32-bit integer (the integers are not converted, so
they are in native byte order).

The magic string currently is "i3-ipc" and will only be changed when a change
in the IPC API is done which breaks compatibility (we hope that we don’t need
to do that).

Currently implemented message types are the following:

COMMAND (0)::
	The payload of the message is a command for i3 (like the commands you
	can bind to keys in the configuration file) and will be executed
	directly after receiving it. There is no reply to this message.
GET_WORKSPACES (1)::
	Gets the current workspaces. The reply will be a JSON-encoded list of
	workspaces (see the reply section).
SUBSCRIBE (2)::
	Subscribes your connection to certain events. See <<events>> for a
	description of this message and the concept of events.
GET_OUTPUTS (3)::
	Gets the current outputs. The reply will be a JSON-encoded list of outputs
	(see the reply section).

So, a typical message could look like this:
--------------------------------------------------
"i3-ipc" <message length> <message type> <payload>
--------------------------------------------------

Or, as a hexdump:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
00000000  69 33 2d 69 70 63 04 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 65 78  |i3-ipc........ex|
00000010  69 74 0a                                          |it.|
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To generate and send such a message, you could use the following code in Perl:
------------------------------------------------------------
sub format_ipc_command {
    my ($msg) = @_;
    my $len;
    # Get the real byte count (vs. amount of characters)
    { use bytes; $len = length($msg); }
    return "i3-ipc" . pack("LL", $len, 0) . $msg;
}

$sock->write(format_ipc_command("exit"));
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

== Receiving replies from i3

Replies from i3 usually consist of a simple string (the length of the string
is the message_length, so you can consider them length-prefixed) which in turn
contain the JSON serialization of a data structure. For example, the
GET_WORKSPACES message returns an array of workspaces (each workspace is a map
with certain attributes).

=== Reply format

The reply format is identical to the normal message format. There also is
the magic string, then the message length, then the message type and the
payload.

The following reply types are implemented:

COMMAND (0)::
	Confirmation/Error code for the COMMAND message.
GET_WORKSPACES (1)::
	Reply to the GET_WORKSPACES message.
SUBSCRIBE (2)::
	Confirmation/Error code for the SUBSCRIBE message.
GET_OUTPUTS (3)::
	Reply to the GET_OUTPUTS message.

=== COMMAND reply

The reply consists of a single serialized map. At the moment, the only
property is +success (bool)+, but this will be expanded in future versions.

*Example:*
-------------------
{ "success": true }
-------------------

=== GET_WORKSPACES reply

The reply consists of a serialized list of workspaces. Each workspace has the
following properties:

num (integer)::
	The logical number of the workspace. Corresponds to the command
	to switch to this workspace.
name (string)::
	The name of this workspace (by default num+1), as changed by the
	user. Encoded in UTF-8.
visible (boolean)::
	Whether this workspace is currently visible on an output (multiple
	workspaces can be visible at the same time).
focused (boolean)::
	Whether this workspace currently has the focus (only one workspace
	can have the focus at the same time).
urgent (boolean)::
	Whether a window on this workspace has the "urgent" flag set.
rect (map)::
	The rectangle of this workspace (equals the rect of the output it
	is on), consists of x, y, width, height.
output (string)::
	The video output this workspace is on (LVDS1, VGA1, …).

*Example:*
-------------------
[
 {
  "num": 0,
  "name": "1",
  "visible": true,
  "focused": true,
  "urgent": false,
  "rect": {
   "x": 0,
   "y": 0,
   "width": 1280,
   "height": 800
  },
  "output": "LVDS1"
 },
 {
  "num": 1,
  "name": "2",
  "visible": false,
  "focused": false,
  "urgent": false,
  "rect": {
   "x": 0,
   "y": 0,
   "width": 1280,
   "height": 800
  },
  "output": "LVDS1"
 }
]
-------------------

=== SUBSCRIBE reply

The reply consists of a single serialized map. The only property is
+success (bool)+, indicating whether the subscription was successful (the
default) or whether a JSON parse error occurred.

*Example:*
-------------------
{ "success": true }
-------------------

=== GET_OUTPUTS reply

The reply consists of a serialized list of outputs. Each output has the
following properties:

name (string)::
	The name of this output (as seen in +xrandr(1)+). Encoded in UTF-8.
active (boolean)::
	Whether this output is currently active (has a valid mode).
current_workspace (integer)::
	The current workspace which is visible on this output. +null+ if the
	output is not active.
rect (map)::
	The rectangle of this output (equals the rect of the output it
	is on), consists of x, y, width, height.

*Example:*
-------------------
[
 {
  "name": "LVDS1",
  "active": true,
  "current_workspace": 4,
  "rect": {
   "x": 0,
   "y": 0,
   "width": 1280,
   "height": 800
  }
 },
 {
  "name": "VGA1",
  "active": true,
  "current_workspace": 1,
  "rect": {
   "x": 1280,
   "y": 0,
   "width": 1280,
   "height": 1024
  },
 }
]
-------------------

== Events

[[events]]

To get informed when certain things happen in i3, clients can subscribe to
events. Events consist of a name (like "workspace") and an event reply type
(like I3_IPC_EVENT_WORKSPACE). The events sent by i3 are in the same format
as replies to specific commands. However, the highest bit of the message type
is set to 1 to indicate that this is an event reply instead of a normal reply.

Caveat: As soon as you subscribe to an event, it is not guaranteed any longer
that the requests to i3 are processed in order. This means, the following
situation can happen: You send a GET_WORKSPACES request but you receive a
"workspace" event before receiving the reply to GET_WORKSPACES. If your
program does not want to cope which such kinds of race conditions (an
event based library may not have a problem here), I suggest you create a
separate connection to receive events.

=== Subscribing to events

By sending a message of type SUBSCRIBE with a JSON-encoded array as payload
you can register to an event.

*Example:*
---------------------------------
type: SUBSCRIBE
payload: [ "workspace", "focus" ]
---------------------------------


=== Available events

The numbers in parenthesis is the event type (keep in mind that you need to
strip the highest bit first).

workspace (0)::
	Sent when the user switches to a different workspace, when a new
	workspace is initialized or when a workspace is removed (because the
	last client vanished).
output (1)::
	Sent when RandR issues a change notification (of either screens,
	outputs, CRTCs or output properties).

*Example:*
--------------------------------------------------------------------
# the appropriate 4 bytes read from the socket are stored in $input

# unpack a 32-bit unsigned integer
my $message_type = unpack("L", $input);

# check if the highest bit is 1
my $is_event = (($message_type >> 31) == 1);

# use the other bits
my $event_type = ($message_type & 0x7F);

if ($is_event) {
  say "Received event of type $event_type";
}
--------------------------------------------------------------------

=== workspace event

This event consists of a single serialized map containing a property
+change (string)+ which indicates the type of the change ("focus", "init",
"empty", "urgent").

*Example:*
---------------------
{ "change": "focus" }
---------------------

=== output event

This event consists of a single serialized map containing a property
+change (string)+ which indicates the type of the change (currently only
"unspecified").

*Example:*
---------------------------
{ "change": "unspecified" }
---------------------------

== See also

For some languages, libraries are available (so you don’t have to implement
all this on your own). This list names some (if you wrote one, please let me
know):

C::
	i3 includes a headerfile +i3/ipc.h+ which provides you all constants.
	However, there is no library yet.
Ruby::
	http://github.com/badboy/i3-ipc
Perl::
	http://search.cpan.org/search?query=AnyEvent::I3
Python::
	http://github.com/thepub/i3ipc