Get output from rofi-script

[fmorroni]

Hi, I'm making a rofi script which is basically a filebrowser but it only lets me navigate inside a specific directory (I can go deeper into the subdirectories but not outside the specified directory). The idea is to use it to ask for a filename for another program (ffcast) and check if it's unique or if I'm overwriting an existing file. This is my code:

#!/bin/sh

echo -e "\0prompt\x1fRecordings"

if [[ -n $ROFI_DATA ]]; then
  rec_dir="$ROFI_DATA"
else
  rec_dir="$SCREEN_RECS"
fi
rec_dir="${rec_dir%%/}"

full_selection="$rec_dir/$1"
if [ -d "$full_selection" ]; then
  rec_dir=$(realpath "$full_selection") 
elif [ -f "$full_selection" ]; then
  # Here will go a rofi confirmation pop up
  echo "Overwriting: $full_selection"
elif [ ! -e "$full_selection" ]; then
  # ffcast -s rec "$full_selection" # This doesn't work because ffcast needs user input to execute
  echo "$full_selection" # This reruns the current script with $full_selection as an element
  exit 1
fi

if [[ "${rec_dir%%/}" != "${SCREEN_RECS%%/}" ]]; then
  echo ".."
fi

echo -e "\0data\x1f$rec_dir"

echo -e "\0message\x1fCurrent dir: $rec_dir"

recs=()

for filename in $(ls -1 "$rec_dir"); do
  path="$rec_dir/$filename"
  recs+=("$filename")
  if [ -d "$path" ]; then
    echo -e "$filename\0icon\x1ffolder"
  else
    echo "$filename"
  fi
done

The script works fine, my problem is outputting the chosen/custom option so that another program can use it. Is it possible to tell the script to stop capturing its own output and just output to stdout and quit? My usage would be to have something like this in another script:

filename=$(rofi -show record -theme screenrec_filename.rasi)
ffcast -s rec "$filename"

Edit: Well, right after posting this I realized I can just echo the output into stderr and then exit. That works, but it's ugly so I'd still like to know if there is a proper way to do it

[DaveDavenport]

Script mode is not intended to be part of another script.
If you need to use the output, use 'dmenu' emulation.

Or if you want to re-use existing rofi feature:

rofi -show filebrowser -filebrowser-command 'echo' -modes filebrowser

(We might need to tune filebrowser to be more useful for this, ill put that on the todo list.
Realize it works for opening, but not saving.)

[fmorroni]

Hi thanks for the reply, I understand I could achieve what I want with the dmenu mode, but I'd have to manually rerun rofi when I go into a subdirectory in order to update the entries right? I already did something similar for another script with dmenu, the problem is there is a few milliseconds between closing and opening a new instance of rofi which causes a flashing of the window and it's annoying, rofi-script doesn't have that problem.
As for the filebrowser command you mentioned, I notice no difference between adding the -filebrowser-command flag or not, rofi still tries to open the selected file instead of just outputting the filename. Also where can I find more information on the filebrowser mode flags? I can't seems to find anything about it in the man pages

[DaveDavenport]

yeah, you didn't mention what version you are running. I guess it is not in your version yet.

[fmorroni]

Oh yeah sorry, I'm on 1.7.5, is that feature only available on the "next version"?

[DaveDavenport]

I guess it is, I don't know from the top of my head what is in what version.

[fmorroni]

Okay thanks for your help. For now I guess I'll stick with the hacky method of outputting to stderr