DBUS-SEND(1)                              User Commands                              DBUS-SEND(1)



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

SYNOPSIS
       dbus-send [--system | --session | --address=ADDRESS] [--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
       http://www.freedesktop.org/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 | uint 16 | 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.)

       --address=ADDRESS
           Send to ADDRESS.

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

AUTHOR
       dbus-send was written by Philip Blundell.

BUGS
       Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see
       http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/



D-Bus 1.8.22                                11/22/2016                               DBUS-SEND(1)