For the sake of mentioning it i'd find this useful for openapplet too :)

Xan, can you explain the use of this stuff ?
Prolly the title say it but I dont get it ;)

dashboard is this cool little app that harvests data and provides the
user information related to what they are doing.
http://www.nat.org/dashboard/

Ok, more information so people who wasn't in the channel can know what
the hell I'm talking about.
The lines above are what Nat thinks it's needed so Dashboard
(http://www.nat.org/dashboard) and Epiphany could cooperate in peace
and harmony and rock the world. It's that, basically.

Yay, that's stuff freedesktop people should take in consideration, not
stupid xbel crap :)
It sounds like a fun project too. Dave, we need to meet and work on an
interface I guess, maybe I'll try to think to something ...

A few notes.

Plugins
-------

For the plugin system, basically I want hooks for the following
events:

    - The browser loads a new page.

    - Bookmarks change (bookmark added, bookmark deleted, bookmark
      edited).

You can basically create a BrowserPlugin object and the plugin can
connect to page_load and bookmark_change signals.

From the page_load signal handler I need to be able to get at the url,
title, and full page content.

From the bookmark_change signal, I just need to get an object which
represents the new, changed or deleted bookmark.

You can do all this stuff synchronously in the same thread as the rest
of the browser, since I'm never going to block.

Bookmark Access Library
-----------------------

This should be a simple C library I can use to read the bookmarks
file.  I just want to be able to enumerate the bookmarks as simple
structures or objects, so this can be dead simple:

    typedef struct _Bookmark {
        char *url;
        char *title;
        char **categories;
    } Bookmark;

    GList *load_bookmarks (char *path);

This is just an example, do it however you want, but for me, this is
all I care about.

The URL history thing should be just the same.

One thing I just remembered that's very important.

I need a way, from within the plugin, of finding out if the browser
window/tab for a page load is focused.  And I need a focus_changed
event, which should give me the url and stuff for the newly-focused
tab/window/thing.

Snorp, could you explain what part of this you are/plan to work on ? I
dont want to work on stuff that you are already doing.

>This should be a simple C library I can use to read the bookmarks
>file

What about the let access this data with the epiphany corba interface
? Trying to access the same file would require locks. Also if a way to
add bookmarks will be required by dashboard or another application,
syncing will be a pain.
Obviously the corba interface would require to startup epiphany.

Starting up epiphany - does this mean you need the GUI around?  That
sounds like a real problem.

In the worst case I can just monitor and read whatever file you write
out.  I don't need to add bookmarks.

> Starting up epiphany - does this mean you need the GUI around?

Nope, the process would be started but no windows opened. Something
similar to epiphany/galeon --server

Just to chime in, it might be nice to have a simple c api that hides
all the corba details from implementor. 

Dave, yeah, that would require a library though.

Nat, if you are ok with the corba interface please let me know and
I'll give a try to implement it in the next days.
Otherwise, proposals on how to do it differently are welcome.

Marco:  I have only done the frontend code -- it simply passes
cluepackets to dashboard every time you open a page.  Needs more work
though.....see dashboard/frontends/ephy-cvs-dashboard.patch 

If you provide me a CORBA interface, I am going to have to write a C
wrapper so I can bind it into C#.

James - you might want to check out my new version of your patch,
which now tries and fails to get the Focused attribute right.

Created attachment 18137 [details] [review]
Possible implementation

The patch add a corba interface to let access epiphany resources.

Basically:

epiphany_resource_select ("Bookmarks");
epiphany_resource_get_description ();

A string containing an rdf description of bookmarks is returned. The C
library could parse this string and return it with an api like the one
Nat described.
For OpenApplet pourpouses this should probably be extended with a way
to filter elements.

Other possible implementation would have been:

- The same api Nat proposed but implemented in Corba, with a C wrapper.

Disadvantages: You cant add properties without breaking api

- a get_n_items, get_propery (prop_name, item_n) api.

Disadvantages: What happen if bookmarks are added/remove while you are
iterating ?

- a C library that reads directly the epiphany xml file.

Disadvantages: Locks required, no way to allow to add resources (not
requires by dashboard but ...).

Opinions ?

(The implementation is largely unfinished, but I dont want to waste
time on it, if it's not ok ...)

Nat, I'm really a bit lost with this, mainly because I dont exactly
understand dashboard architecture.
I talked a bit with teuf and it seem that the worst damage we could
get by reading the same file is to not be able to write on disk
bookmarks from epiphany. Considering that it's probably never going to
happen to write/read at the same time, maybe it could be acceptable.
Writing a parser for bookmarks in C is trivial, if that's your
preferred solution I can do it.
I was plannig to find a solution useful for other applications too,
but that's harder and would require a lot more thinking ... so I'd
prolly give up on it for now.

I didn't say that :) Actually if you save your bookmarks in a
temporary file, and then replace the real bookmark file with it, there
shouldn't be any issue

Okay, I'm happy to just parse your XML files if you write to them
atomically.  Sorry about all the confusion on that.

I do think you need a simple plugin system though.

I found the bookmarks file; where do you store your URL history?

Also - any opinions on a simple plugin system?

Looks like history is in ~/.gnome2/epiphany/ephy-history.xml

Yeah that's the history. For bookmarks please use bookmarks.rdf.

About plugins. We sort of planned to have a simple plugin system at
some point so I think there is no problem.

I checked in a very simple plugin framework.
The sample plugin get notification when bookmarks changes.

Now we need to decide the set of api to expose.
The worst problem with this is that ephy-shell.c include all services
instead of using a base type for them.

The plugin stuff should be done. I'm now installing useful headers and
the sample plugin does what you asked.

I guess this can be closed. Dashboard can parse bookmarks/history and
we have a plugin system that allows to get the stuff you need.