Access klipper clipboard on CLI under KDE4

NOTE: find most recent version on github: https://github.com/milianw/shell-helpers/blob/master/clipboard

Here’s a little script you can save in your path and do things like

    # paste current clipboard into file
    clipboard > "some_file"
    # copy some file into clipboard
    cat "some_file" | clipboard

Actually I find it rather useful so I thought I should share it.

    #!/bin/bash
     
    # Access your KDE 4 klipper on the command line
    # usage:
    #  ./clipboard
    #    will output current contents of klipper
    #  echo "foobar" | ./clipboard
    #    will put "foobar" into your clipboard/klipper
     
    # check for stdin
    if ! tty -s && stdin=$(</dev/stdin) && [[ "$stdin" ]]; then
      # get the rest of stdin
      stdin=$stdin$'\n'$(cat)
      # oh, nice - user input! we set that as current
      # clipboard content
      qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper setClipboardContents "$stdin"
      exit
    fi
     
    # if we reach this point no user input was given and we
    # print out the current contents of the clipboard
    qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardContents

As usually, save the file (attached below) in your $PATH and make it executable.

PS: Thanks to Martin Vidner for his article on D-BUS btw. - it gave me the proper dbus commands. PPS: Thanks the the various comments below!

Attachment	Size
clipboard.sh	647 bytes

Comments

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Comment by Anonymous (2016-03-11 17:49:00)

Great idea - thanks for the post.

Since the features of Klipper are quite limited I switched to CopyQ a while ago. CopyQ has all the functions I need for everyday work (delete clipboard items, QR code generation, paste into VIM). The latest version is available here http://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/.

Your script works fine with CopyQ - after a little modification: Replace

qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper setClipboardContents “$stdin”

with

echo “$stdin”

xclip -selection clipboard

and delete line 22.

Voila!

Comment by Anonymous (2016-02-27 09:24:00)

Thanks a lot for offering this method. It’s awesome. I used it to convert html to markdown.

Comment by wxl (not verified) (2013-04-30 19:41:00)

for most purposes, this is excellent! however, trying to post a 3843-line long VBox.log, /usr/bin/qdbus complains the argument list is too long. i can’t off-hand conceive of an elegant way to solve this problem. anyone?

Comment by Anonymous (not verified) (2013-02-20 09:51:00)

Thank you so much!

Comment by Anonymous (not verified) (2012-12-24 04:53:00)

This was so helpful. Thank you. Makes it so easy to write the clipboard to a file through a keyboard shortcut. Configured another keyboard shortcut in klipper to edit the clipboard so now can make anotations if needed with one keystroke, then dump with another!

Comment by Anonymous (not verified) (2011-03-14 12:05:00)

that’s great! thnx!

Comment by Jice (not verified) (2011-01-06 21:33:00)

You should use qdbus, this simplifies a lot. Here is the version I’m using:

    #!/bin/bash
     
    # Access your KDE 4 klipper on the command line
    # usage:
    #  ./clipboard
    #    will output current contents of klipper
    #  echo "foobar" | ./clipboard
    #    will put "foobar" into your clipboard/klipper
     
    # check for stdin
    if ! tty -s && stdin=$(</dev/stdin) && [[ "$stdin" ]]; then
      # get the rest of stdin
      stdin=$stdin$'\n'$(cat)
      # oh, nice - user input! we set that as current
      # clipboard content
      qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper setClipboardContents "$stdin"
      exit
    fi
     
    # if we reach this point no user input was given and we
    #   print out the current contents of the clipboard
    qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardContents

So you won’t regret dcop good ol’ time anymore ;-)

Comment by Milian Wolff (2011-03-18 17:13:00)

thanks, updated the script now.

Comment by Kevin Brubeck Unhammer (not verified) (2010-12-21 12:52:00)

You should change the script to say “read -r -t 1 stdin”, that is, add the -r option so that read won’t treat \1 etc. as escapes.

It’s very annoying when working on one-liners in the shell, then deciding they should go into a file, and then finding that all the sed commands are messed up =P

Comment by Milian Wolff (2010-12-22 16:31:00)

try the updated version on github: https://github.com/milianw/shell-helpers/blob/master/clipboard

Comment by notslad (not verified) (2010-11-19 07:17:00)

This small wrapper script will put the output of the command into a GUI msgbox.. in case you want to see the results of piping the clipboard contents through a command by running it via alt-f2..

    #!/bin/bash
     
    ! type $1 >/dev/null && kdialog --error "Invalid Command: $1" && exit 1
     
    results="$(clipboard | $@)"
     
    [[ -z "$results" ]] && kdialog --error "Nothing returned through stdout" && exit 2
     
    kdialog --msgbox "$results"
    exit $?

Comment by Paolo (not verified) (2010-09-29 11:19:00)

Very old post but still a good idea.

Just a thing: to get rid of that 1 second wait, I changed the beginning of the script (lines 6,7,9).

This way, the script doesn’t even try to read from standard input if it’s connected to a terminal.

    #!/bin/bash
     
    # check for stdin
    #   since we don't want to wait endlessly we set a timeout
    #   a pity `read` only supports seconds and no fractions...
     
    if ! tty -s && stdin=$(</dev/stdin) && [[ "$stdin" ]] ; then
      # get the rest of stdin
        # not necessary - already got everything
      # oh, nice - user input! we set that as current
      # clipboard content
      dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.kde.klipper \
        /klipper org.kde.klipper.klipper.setClipboardContents \
        string:"$stdin"
      exit
    fi
     
    # if we reach this point no user input was given and we
    #   print out the current contents of the clipboard
    # note: I hate the output of dbus, dcop was much easier in that regard!
    dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.kde.klipper /klipper \
        org.kde.klipper.klipper.getClipboardContents | awk '
          BEGIN { output = ""; }
          {
            if ( NR > 1 ) {
              output = output $0 "\n";
            }
          }
          END {
            print substr(output, 12, length(output) - 13);
          }'

Comment by Milian Wolff (2010-11-20 19:14:00)

thanks, incorporated into my git branch.

Comment by Morten Slott Hansen (not verified) (2010-05-06 10:09:00)

This is awesome. I extended this with xmlcopyeditor and KDE4 hotkeys to have a quick way to get the clipboard content into an XML editor.

I created a script called xmlCopyEditor_readClipboard.sh

    #!/bin/sh
    /home/msh/bin/clipboard.sh > /tmp/clipboard.txt
    /usr/bin/xmlcopyeditor /tmp/clipboard.txt

And attached it to a hotkey combination meta + shift + x

This has made my life so much better - hope others can find this usefull!

EDIT: fixed formatting, regards - Milian

Comment by Joetke (not verified) (2009-10-20 14:58:00)

Hi, interesting post really. But I wonder whether KDE 4 is mandatory because when I run your script I got this response: Error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.kde.klipper was not provided by any .service files Regards.

Comment by Milian Wolff (2009-10-22 00:44:00)

Yes, this version is for KDE 4. I once had a KDE 3 version, but it looks like I lost it. It was much easier though, you’ll just have to exchange the DBUS stuff with the good old DCOP from KDE 3.

Comment by joetke (not verified) (2009-11-05 14:38:00)

Thanks, it works flawlessly. Regards from Strasbourg, France.

Comment by Anonymous (not verified) (2009-08-12 01:21:00)

I have just found the answer to my question. The trick is not to use “dbus-send”. It works with qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardHistoryItem 0 qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardHistoryItem 1 qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper getClipboardHistoryItem 2

Comment by Anonymous (not verified) (2009-08-11 22:23:00)

Is there some way to access the klipper history from the command line?

Comment by Milian Wolff (2009-08-12 01:09:00)

Just look for yourself:

run qdbusviewer
go to org.kde.klipper
go to klipper/org.kde.klipper.klipper
pick any *history* method you’d like

For inspiration on how to use those stuff in bash see my script above.

Comment by Simon (not verified) (2011-12-06 09:32:00)

Thanks Milian this helped me a lot!

Comment by Sam Tresler (not verified) (2009-07-30 02:31:00)

AWESOME! I was sick of ctl-shift-V’ing 40 lines at a time so I googled and found this. Precisely what I was looking for, thank you.

Comment by Antonio (not verified) (2008-11-20 20:59:00)

Here’s a little script you can save in your path and do things like

cat “some_file” > clipboard

Of course, it destroyed the “clipboard” file :-)

Greetings from Spain!

P.S. I suppose it’s

      cat "some_file" | clipboard

Comment by Milian Wolff (2008-11-26 18:42:00)

Thanks, fixed.

Comment by alexs77 (not verified) (2011-09-25 15:26:00)

Dunno if you’re still fixing stuff, but UUoC always makes my wanna cry… :/

You’re “storing” the output of the clipobard script with:

clipboard > file

You can also feed it from standard input without having to “misuse” cat:

clipboard < file

Cheers! And thanks for the script ;)

Comment by Sys (not verified) (2012-08-04 14:35:00)

I agree that “clipboard < file” is more optimized than “cat file

clipboard”, although:

Remembering “cat file

clipboard” is better for newbies, as they later can execute, for example, “ls

clipboard”.

However, newbies remembering “clipboard < file” have problems trying later things like “clipboard < ls”, which does not work, they still would have to remember this structure: “ls | clipboard”.

Comment by Sys (not verified) (2012-08-04 14:30:00)

I agree that “clipboard < file” is more optimized than “cat file

clipboard”, although:

Remembering “cat file

clipboard” is better for newbies, as they later can execute, for example, “ls

clipboard”.

Published on August 04, 2012.

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