sindresorhus/get-windows

Trigger an event when focus changes

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#1 opened on Apr 4, 2016

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 (5 comments) (14 reactions) (0 assignees)JavaScript (913 stars) (194 forks)user submission
enhancementhelp wanted

Description

I imagine it would be something like:

const activeWin  = require('active-win');

activeWin.on('change', win => {
    console.log(win.title);
});

With win being the same as activeWin() returns.

No idea how to achieve this though as it would have to communicate with the binary somehow. Maybe spawn the native binary when someone subscribes to the events, and have the binary push to stdout for each event.

PR welcome 😀

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascriptnodejs
Domain
desktop
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
needs investigation
Prerequisites
Node.js eventschild process
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
30
Research direction
Examine the existing native binary used by the module to understand its output format. Investigate how the binary could be run in a long lived process and emit events when the active window changes. Consider using child process.spawn to start the binary and parse its stdout for changes. Look at the existing source code for how activeWin() works to replicate the data structure. The issue's PR welcome indicates maintainer openness, but the approach is unclear.