libelektra is a configuration library and tools set. It provides very many capabilities. Here I’d like to show how to observe data model changes from key/value manipulations outside of the actual application inside a user desktop. libelektra broadcasts changes as D-Bus messages. The Oyranos projects will use this method to sync the settings views of GUI’s, like qcmsevents, Synnefo and KDE’s KolorManager with libOyranos and it’s CLI tools in the next release.

Here a small example for connecting the org.libelektra interface over the QDBusConnection class with a class callback function:

Declare a callback function in your Qt class header:

public slots:
 void configChanged( QString msg );

Add the QtDBus API in your sources:

#include <QtDBus/QtDBus>

Wire the org.libelektra intereface to your callback in e.g. your Qt classes constructor:

if( QDBusConnection::sessionBus().connect( QString(), "/org/libelektra/configuration", "org.libelektra", QString(),
 this, SLOT( configChanged( QString ) )) )
 fprintf(stderr, "=================== Done connect\n" );

In your callback arrive the org.libelektra signals:

void Synnefo::configChanged( QString msg )
{
 fprintf( stdout, "config changed: %s\n", msg.toLocal8Bit().data() );
};

As the number of messages are not always known, it is useful to take the first message as a ping and update with a small timeout. Here a more practical code elaboration example:

// init a gate keeper in the class constructor:
acceptDBusUpdate = true;
void Synnefo::configChanged( QString msg )
{
  // allow the first message to ping
  if(acceptDBusUpdate == false) return;
  // block more messages
  acceptDBusUpdate = false;
  // update the view slightly later and avoid trouble
  QTimer::singleShot(250, this, SLOT( update() ));
};
void Synnefo::update()
{
  // clear the Oyranos settings cache (Oyranos CMS specific)
  oyGetPersistentStrings( NULL );
  // the data model reading from libelektra and GUI update
  // code ...
  // open the door for more messages to come
  acceptDBusUpdate = true;
}

The above code works for both Qt4 and Qt5.