DBUS-SEND(1)

NAME
dbus-send - Send a message to a message bus

SYNOPSIS

dbus-send [--system | --session | --bus=ADDRESS | --peer=ADDRESS] [--sender=NAME] [--dest=NAME] [--print-reply [=literal]] [--reply-timeout=MSEC] [--type=TYPE] OBJECT_PATH INTERFACE.MEMBER [CONTENTS...]

DESCRIPTION

The dbus-send command is used to send a message to a D-Bus message bus. See https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/ for more information about the big picture.

There are two well-known message buses: the systemwide message bus (installed on many systems as the "messagebus" service) and the per-user-login-session message bus (started each time a user logs in). The --system and --session options direct dbus-send to send messages to the system or session buses respectively. If neither is specified, dbus-send sends to the session bus.

Nearly all uses of dbus-send must provide the --dest argument which is the name of a connection on the bus to send the message to. If --dest is omitted, no destination is set.

The object path and the name of the message to send must always be specified. Following arguments, if any, are the message contents (message arguments). These are given as type-specified values and may include containers (arrays, dicts, and variants) as described below.

    <contents>   ::= <item> | <container> [ <item> | <container>...]
    <item>       ::= <type>:<value>
    <container>  ::= <array> | <dict> | <variant>
    <array>      ::= array:<type>:<value>[,<value>...]
    <dict>       ::= dict:<type>:<type>:<key>,<value>[,<key>,<value>...]
    <variant>    ::= variant:<type>:<value>
    <type>       ::= string | int16 | uint16 | int32 | uint32 | int64 | uint64 | double | byte | boolean | objpath

D-Bus supports more types than these, but dbus-send currently does not. Also, dbus-send does not permit empty containers or nested containers (e.g. arrays of variants).

Here is an example invocation:

      dbus-send --dest=org.freedesktop.ExampleName               \
                /org/freedesktop/sample/object/name              \
                org.freedesktop.ExampleInterface.ExampleMethod   \
                int32:47 string:'hello world' double:65.32       \
                array:string:"1st item","next item","last item"  \
                dict:string:int32:"one",1,"two",2,"three",3      \
                variant:int32:-8                                 \
                objpath:/org/freedesktop/sample/object/name

Note that the interface is separated from a method or signal name by a dot, though in the actual protocol the interface and the interface member are separate fields.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

--dest=NAME
    Specify the name of the connection to receive the message.

--print-reply
    Block for a reply to the message sent, and print any reply received in a human-readable form. It also means the message type (--type=) is method_call.

--print-reply=literal
    Block for a reply to the message sent, and print the body of the reply. If the reply is an object path or a string, it is printed literally, with no punctuation, escape characters etc.

--reply-timeout=MSEC
    Wait for a reply for up to MSEC milliseconds. The default is implementation-defined, typically 25 seconds.

--system
    Send to the system message bus.

--session
    Send to the session message bus. (This is the default.)

--bus=ADDRESS
    Register on a message bus at ADDRESS, typically a dbus-daemon.

--peer=ADDRESS
    Send to a non-message-bus D-Bus server at ADDRESS. In this case dbus-send will not call the Hello method.

--sender=NAME
    Request ownership of name NAME before sending the message. The name will be released when dbus-send exits.

--type=TYPE
    Specify method_call or signal (defaults to "signal").

EXIT STATUS

Exit status 0 indicates success. A non-zero exit status indicates any failure, including invalid parameters, failure to connect to the --bus or --peer, failure to obtain the --sender name, a timeout while waiting for a reply to a method call, or receiving an error as the reply to a method call.

AUTHOR

dbus-send was written by Philip Blundell.

BUGS

Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/