dconf integration for Java and JavaFX

Introduction

This library provides an easy way to integrate dconf into your Java / JavaFX applications.

It uses the fx-glib GLib bindings to map native java objects to GVariant pointers and vice versa.

Highlights

• Native bindings to libdconf via BridJ (no need to install any native libraries)
• Nice object-oriented API
• Supported platforms: Linux, possibly others (untested)

Requirements

• libdconf, libglib2,.... whatever is needed to interact with dconf
• Running D-Bus instance (the default dconf client interacts with libdconf via D-Bus)
• Oracle Java SE 7 Runtime (possibly OpenJDK 7 works, haven't tested)

Usually every modern Linux distribution should meet the first of the two requirements mentioned above.

Features

Below you'll find a list of already existing features as well as features that are planned for future releases:

• Bindings to the C-API of dconf (libdconf) - about 95% done
• Support for synchronous calls
• Support for asynchronous calls
• Nice JavaFX API using Workers, Services, Callbacks and Properties
• java.util.prefs.Preferences implementation that uses dconf as it's backend - No listener support, otherwise usable

Example Usage

The Java code below shows how to play around with a few configuration keys.:

// Obtains a new dconf client instance.
final org.gnome.dconf.Client dconfClient = org.gnome.dconf.Client.create();

// Use the client to write some config entries...
dconfClient.writeBoolean("/com/example/ExampleApp/exampleBoolean", true);
dconfClient.writeString("/com/example/ExampleApp/exampleString", "Hello, World!")

// Retrieve some config values...
final boolean exampleBoolean = dconfClient.readBoolean("/com/example/ExampleApp/exampleBoolean");
final String exampleString = dconfClient.readString("/com/example/ExampleApp/exampleString");

Bugs and Open Issues

• Unless the fx-glib GLib bindings don't offer proper mapping of GObject signal mapping it is not possible to provide the desired listener functionality to this library. :-(
• The example app that ships with this library (dconf Editor) is not feature-complete (yet)