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NAME

Clipboard::Any - Common interface to clipboard manager functions

VERSION

This document describes version 0.012 of Clipboard::Any (from Perl distribution Clipboard-Any), released on 2024-08-30.

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a common interface to interact with clipboard.

Some terminology:

  • clipboard content

    The current clipboard content. Some clipboard manager supports storing multiple items (multiple contents). All the items are called "clipboard history".

  • clipboard history

    Some clipboard manager supports storing multiple items (multiple contents). All the items are called clipboard history. It is presented as an array. The current item/content is at index 0, the secondmost current item is at index 1, and so on.

Supported clipboard managers

Klipper

The default clipboard manager on KDE Plasma.

clipit

parcellite

xclip

This is not a "real" clipboard manager, but just an interface to the X selections. With xclip, the history is viewed as having two items. The first/recent is the primary selection and the second one is the secondary.

This module provides common functions related to clipboard manager.

Supported clipboard manager: KDE Plasma's Klipper (klipper), parcellite, clipit, xclip. Support for more clipboard managers, e.g. on Windows or other Linux desktop environment is welcome.

NOTES

2021-07-15 - Tested on my system (KDE Plasma 5.12.9 on Linux).

FUNCTIONS

add_clipboard_content

Usage:

add_clipboard_content(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

Add a new content to the clipboard.

For xclip: when adding content, the primary selection is set. The clipboard content is unchanged.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • clipboard_manager => str

    Explicitly set clipboard manager to use.

    The default, when left undef, is to detect what clipboard manager is running.

  • content => str

    (No description)

  • tee => bool

    If set to true, will output content back to STDOUT.

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

clear_clipboard_content

Usage:

clear_clipboard_content(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

Delete current clipboard content.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • clipboard_manager => str

    Explicitly set clipboard manager to use.

    The default, when left undef, is to detect what clipboard manager is running.

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

clear_clipboard_history

Usage:

clear_clipboard_history(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

Delete all clipboard items.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • clipboard_manager => str

    Explicitly set clipboard manager to use.

    The default, when left undef, is to detect what clipboard manager is running.

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

detect_clipboard_manager

Usage:

detect_clipboard_manager() -> str

Detect which clipboard manager program is currently running.

Will return a string containing name of clipboard manager program, e.g. klipper. Will return undef if no known clipboard manager is detected.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

No arguments.

Return value: (str)

get_clipboard_content

Usage:

get_clipboard_content(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

Get the clipboard content (most recent, history index [0]).

Caveats for klipper: Non-text item is not retrievable by getClipboardContents(). If the current item is e.g. an image, then the next text item from history will be returned instead, or empty string if none exists.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • clipboard_manager => str

    Explicitly set clipboard manager to use.

    The default, when left undef, is to detect what clipboard manager is running.

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

get_clipboard_history_item

Usage:

get_clipboard_history_item(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

Get a clipboard history item.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • clipboard_manager => str

    Explicitly set clipboard manager to use.

    The default, when left undef, is to detect what clipboard manager is running.

  • index => int

    Index of item in history (0 means the current/latest, 1 the second latest, and so on).

    If the index exceeds the number of items in history, empty string or undef will be returned instead.

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

list_clipboard_history

Usage:

list_clipboard_history(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

List the clipboard history.

Caveats for klipper: 1) Klipper does not provide method to get the length of history. So we retrieve history item one by one using getClipboardHistoryItem(i) from i=0, i=1, and so on. And assume that if we get two consecutive empty string, it means we reach the end of the clipboard history before the first empty result.

2) Non-text items are not retrievable by getClipboardHistoryItem().

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • clipboard_manager => str

    Explicitly set clipboard manager to use.

    The default, when left undef, is to detect what clipboard manager is running.

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

HOMEPAGE

Please visit the project's homepage at https://metacpan.org/release/Clipboard-Any.

SOURCE

Source repository is at https://github.com/perlancar/perl-Clipboard-Any.

AUTHOR

perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>

CONTRIBUTING

To contribute, you can send patches by email/via RT, or send pull requests on GitHub.

Most of the time, you don't need to build the distribution yourself. You can simply modify the code, then test via:

% prove -l

If you want to build the distribution (e.g. to try to install it locally on your system), you can install Dist::Zilla, Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR, Pod::Weaver::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR, and sometimes one or two other Dist::Zilla- and/or Pod::Weaver plugins. Any additional steps required beyond that are considered a bug and can be reported to me.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2024, 2023, 2022 by perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Clipboard-Any

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.