Support regex matching in rules

[levouh]

Is there a better way to ignore things based on summary for a given appname (yes I am aware that I should use desktop_entry instead) than:

[kdec_pushover_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Pushover"
    format = ""

[kdec_gmail_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Gmail"
    format = ""

[kdec_cal_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Calendar"
    format = ""

[kdec_ov_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Okta Verify"
    format = ""

For example, using a script based on the appname that just modifies the format like:

[kdec_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "*"
    script = ignore.sh

where the script can use "better" pattern matching (basically just a bunch of | statements) and "return" format = "" (to ignore the notification) manually?

[fwsmit]

You cannot use a script to do this, but you should be able to do it the way you suggest inside of dunst. Dunst uses fnmatch(3) for pattern matching a list of patterns. The pattern: summary = @(one|two|three)" matches any string that contains "one", "two" or "three".

This should probably get documented better, but I hope this answers your question.

[levouh]

Definitely does, thanks.

[levouh]

@fwsmit Given that my notifications are coming through as:

appname=KDE Connect
summary=Gmail

which is captured using a script to just log every notification (skipping something like running dunst with -print mostly just to check the rule is happening), my rule is:

[kdec_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "@(Pushover|Gmail|Calendar)"
    format = ""

and things are not being ignored as I would expect. Is the format there correct? I will modify the "logging" to check trailing whitespace, but I would expect these to be ignored.

I run dunst as a user service, and am restarting it to reload the configuration via systemctl --user restart dunst. I have also verified that once I kill it, there are no other instances running (and it is loading my other configuration so I know the configuration file is being read).

[fwsmit]

Whoops, read the fnmatch documentation incorrectly. Dunst calls fnmatch without flags, but you need the FNM_EXTMATCH flag to have the behavior. It's a gnu extension, so I'll have to look to see how we can enable it on certain platforms.

[fwsmit]

Looking into this, I found this PR: #659, which implements said feature, but it was decided it was not the right solution. Regex was deemed as the more correct solution. I'll look into how that could be implemented right now. I'll make a tracking issue to consolidate the different issues about this.

[levouh]

Sounds good, want me to close this one?

For what its worth, being able to filter using a script (perhaps return an exit code) could also be relatively agnostic to how the user wants to do it. Could be (potentially) less work on the dunst side?

[fwsmit]

Sounds good, want me to close this one?

No, you can keep this open. I'll close it when regex is implemented.

For what its worth, being able to filter using a script (perhaps return an exit code) could also be relatively agnostic to how the user wants to do it. Could be (potentially) less work on the dunst side?

That's a possibility, but it would be easier for the user to use regex of course. For more advanced use cases which will never be supported by dunst this would be an option.

[fwsmit]

@levouh I've implemented regex in #1017. Would you mind testing it?

[levouh]

Will do!

[levouh]

@fwsmit it would look something like:

[kdec_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Gmail|Slack"
    format = ""

and not:

[kdec_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Gmail\|Slack"
    format = ""

right?

[levouh]

Actually looks like the commit has docs, let me read those.

[fwsmit]

@fwsmit it would look something like:

[kdec_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Gmail|Slack"
    format = ""

and not:

[kdec_ignore]
    appname = "KDE Connect"
    summary = "Gmail\|Slack"
    format = ""

right?

yes

Actually looks like the commit has docs, let me read those.

also yes :)

[fwsmit]

I opted for the extended syntax, as I don't think you will often need to match the special characters literally.

[levouh]

Works perfectly for me, tried a handful of regex things like [], [^], .*, etc.

Also verified that the old syntax for * replaced with .* works as intended.

Thanks for the feature!

[fwsmit]

Works perfectly for me, tried a handful of regex things like [], [^], .*, etc.

Also verified that the old syntax for * replaced with .* works as intended.

Thanks for the feature!

Cool. I'll add error messages for incorrect regex patterns and then I'll merge it.

[fwsmit]

Merged!