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<div class="chapter" title="Chapter 19. Recently Used Documents">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title">
<a name="chapter-recent-documents"></a>Chapter 19. Recently Used Documents</h2></div></div></div>
<div class="toc">
<p><b>Table of Contents</b></p>
<ul>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="chapter-recent-documents.html#sec-recentmanager">RecentManager</a></span></li>
<li><span class="sect1"><a href="sec-recentchooser.html">RecentChooser</a></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="note" title="Note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><table border="0" summary="Note">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25"><img alt="[Note]" src="icons/note.png"></td>
<th align="left">Note</th>
</tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p>Recent Files support is available in <span class="application">gtkmm</span> version 2.10 and
later</p></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>
<span class="application">gtkmm</span> provides an easy way to manage recently used documents. The classes
involved in implementing this functionality are
<code class="classname">RecentManager</code>,
<code class="classname">RecentChooserDialog</code>,
<code class="classname">RecentChooserMenu</code>,
<code class="classname">RecentChooserWidget</code>, and
<code class="classname">RecentFilter</code>.
</p>
<p>
Each item in the list of recently used files is identified by its URI, and
can have associated metadata. The metadata can be used to specify how the
file should be displayed, a description of the file, its mime type, which
application registered it, whether it's private to the registering
application, and several other things.
</p>
<div class="sect1" title="RecentManager">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="sec-recentmanager"></a>RecentManager</h2></div></div></div>
<p>
<code class="classname">RecentManager</code> acts as the central database of
recently used files. You use this class to register new files, remove
files from the list, or look up recently used files.
</p>
<p>
You can create a new <code class="classname">RecentManager</code>, but you'll most
likely just want to use the default one. You can get a reference to the
default <code class="classname">RecentManager</code> with
<code class="methodname">get_default()</code>.
</p>
<div class="sect2" title="Adding Items to the List of Recent Files">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">
<a name="recent-files-adding"></a>Adding Items to the List of Recent Files</h3></div></div></div>
<p>
To add a new file to the list of recent documents, in the simplest case,
you only need to provide the URI. For example:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">Glib::RefPtr<Gtk::RecentManager> recent_manager = Gtk::RecentManager::get_default();
recent_manager->add_item(uri);</pre>
<p>
If you want to register a file with metadata, you can pass a
<code class="classname">RecentManager::Data</code> parameter to
<code class="methodname">add_item()</code>. The metadata that can be set on a
particular file item is as follows:
</p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc">
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">app_exec</code>: The command line to be used to launch
this resource. This string may contain the "f" and "u" escape
characters which will be expanded to the resource file path and URI
respectively</p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">app_name</code>: The name of the application that
registered the resource</p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">description</code>: A short description of the
resource as a UTF-8 encoded string</p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">display_name</code>: The name of the resource to be
used for display as a UTF-8 encoded string</p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">groups</code>: A list of groups associated with this
item. Groups are essentially arbitrary strings associated with a
particular resource. They can be thought of as 'categories' (such
as "email", "graphics", etc) or tags for the resource.</p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">is_private</code>: Whether this resource should be
visible only to applications that have registered it or not</p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p><code class="varname">mime_type</code>: The MIME type of the resource</p></li>
</ul></div>
<p>
In addition to adding items to the list, you can also look up items from
the list and modify or remove items.
</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2" title="Looking up Items in the List of Recent Files">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">
<a name="recent-files-lookup"></a>Looking up Items in the List of Recent Files</h3></div></div></div>
<p>
To look up recently used files, <code class="classname">RecentManager</code>
provides several functions. To look up a specific item by its URI, you
can use the <code class="methodname">lookup_item()</code> function, which will
return a <code class="classname">RecentInfo</code> class. If the specified URI
did not exist in the list of recent files, the
<code class="classname">RecentInfo</code> object will be invalid.
<code class="classname">RecentInfo</code> provides an implementation for
<code class="methodname">operator bool()</code> which can be used to test for
validity. For example:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">Gtk::RecentInfo info = recent_manager->lookup_item(uri);
if (info)
{
// item was found
}</pre>
<p>
A <code class="classname">RecentInfo</code> object is essentially an object
containing all of the metadata about a single recently-used file. You
can use this object to look up any of the properties listed above. FIXME
- add cross-reference.
</p>
<p>
If you don't want to look for a specific URI, but instead want to get a
list of all recently used items, <code class="classname">RecentManager</code>
provides the <code class="methodname">get_items()</code> function. The return
value of this function can be assigned to any standard C++ container
(e.g. <code class="classname">std::vector</code>,
<code class="classname">std::list</code>, etc) and contains a list of all
recently-used files up to a user-defined limit (FIXME: what's the
default limit?). The following code demonstrates how you might get a
list of recently-used files:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">std::vector<Gtk::RecentInfo> info_list = recent_manager->get_items();</pre>
<p>
The limit on the number of items returned can be set
by <code class="methodname">set_limit()</code>, and queried with
<code class="methodname">get_limit()</code>.
</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2" title="Modifying the List of Recent Files">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">
<a name="recent-files-modifying"></a>Modifying the List of Recent Files</h3></div></div></div>
<p>
There may be times when you need to modify the list of recent files.
For instance, if a file is moved or renamed, you may need to update the
file's location in the recent files list so that it doesn't point to an
incorrect location. You can update an item's location by using
<code class="methodname">move_item()</code>.
</p>
<p>
In addition to changing a file's URI, you can also remove items from the
list, either one at a time or by clearint them all at once. The former
is accomplished with <code class="methodname">remove_item()</code>, the latter with
<code class="methodname">purge_items()</code>.
</p>
<div class="note" title="Note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;"><table border="0" summary="Note">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25"><img alt="[Note]" src="icons/note.png"></td>
<th align="left">Note</th>
</tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p>
The functions <code class="methodname">move_item()</code>,
<code class="methodname">remove_item()</code> and
<code class="methodname">purge_items()</code> have no effect on the actual files
that are referred to by the URIs, they only modify the list of recent
files.
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