How to use json for workspaces?

[beyond9thousand]

I am currently using a bash script integrated through literal for handling workspaces. I am aware that using json is a better option but am unable to decipher the method to do so. Can someone help out?

[VuiMuich]

Which WM are you using?
Some, like leftwm have a native method (leftwm-state) to prind info in JSON format. Some like qtile, xmonad or awesomewm should be ralatively easily hackable to do.

In your widget you use '${some-field.child-field}' to get the value of child-field. You can have a look at how magic variables are handled.

[beyond9thousand]

I am using bspwm

[VuiMuich]

afaim bspc wm -d dumps you the current state as JSON, but I am no real bspwm user so I am not sure if this includes all the info you want. And iirc this was no continuous output, so you would need to poll for it.

[viandoxdev]

bspc wm -d; bspc subscribe desktop | while read -r; do bspw wm -d; done

Will give continuous output of the state of the wm in json. You can just put that in a deflisten to get a variable with it. If you want to restructure the json to be easier to use I'd recommend piping jq:

_wm() { bspc wm -d | jq -<options> 'jq filter'; }; _wm; bspc subscribe desktop | while read -r; do _wm; done 

For the yuck you could do something like that:

(deflisten wm :initial '...' `the command above`)
(defwidget workspace [index]
    (whatever {wm[index]})) ; Or whatever json access you need to get the data you want
(defwidget workspaces []
    (workspace :index 0)
    ; ....
    (workspace :index n))

Or use a for

(defwidget workspaces []
    (for ws in {wm.workspaces} ; again adapt that to the structure of your json
        (whatever {ws.<something>})))

[beyond9thousand]

not quite sure about what the jq -<options> 'jq filter' is, it returns an error. am i supposed to substitute it with something?

Ok nvm got it. Seeing if this would work for the use case