ApplicationRef

public struct ApplicationRef : ApplicationProtocol, GWeakCapturing

GtkApplication is a class that handles many important aspects of a GTK+ application in a convenient fashion, without enforcing a one-size-fits-all application model.

Currently, GtkApplication handles GTK+ initialization, application uniqueness, session management, provides some basic scriptability and desktop shell integration by exporting actions and menus and manages a list of toplevel windows whose life-cycle is automatically tied to the life-cycle of your application.

While GtkApplication works fine with plain GtkWindows, it is recommended to use it together with GtkApplicationWindow.

When GDK threads are enabled, GtkApplication will acquire the GDK lock when invoking actions that arrive from other processes. The GDK lock is not touched for local action invocations. In order to have actions invoked in a predictable context it is therefore recommended that the GDK lock be held while invoking actions locally with g_action_group_activate_action(). The same applies to actions associated with GtkApplicationWindow and to the “activate” and “open” GApplication methods.

Automatic resources ##

GtkApplication will automatically load menus from the GtkBuilder resource located at “gtk/menus.ui”, relative to the application’s resource base path (see g_application_set_resource_base_path()). The menu with the ID “app-menu” is taken as the application’s app menu and the menu with the ID “menubar” is taken as the application’s menubar. Additional menus (most interesting submenus) can be named and accessed via gtk_application_get_menu_by_id() which allows for dynamic population of a part of the menu structure.

If the resources “gtk/menus-appmenu.ui” or “gtk/menus-traditional.ui” are present then these files will be used in preference, depending on the value of gtk_application_prefers_app_menu(). If the resource “gtk/menus-common.ui” is present it will be loaded as well. This is useful for storing items that are referenced from both “gtk/menus-appmenu.ui” and “gtk/menus-traditional.ui”.

It is also possible to provide the menus manually using gtk_application_set_app_menu() and gtk_application_set_menubar().

GtkApplication will also automatically setup an icon search path for the default icon theme by appending “icons” to the resource base path. This allows your application to easily store its icons as resources. See gtk_icon_theme_add_resource_path() for more information.

If there is a resource located at “gtk/help-overlay.ui” which defines a GtkShortcutsWindow with ID “help_overlay” then GtkApplication associates an instance of this shortcuts window with each GtkApplicationWindow and sets up keyboard accelerators (Control-F1 and Control-?) to open it. To create a menu item that displays the shortcuts window, associate the item with the action win.show-help-overlay.

A simple application ##

A simple example

GtkApplication optionally registers with a session manager of the users session (if you set the GtkApplication:register-session property) and offers various functionality related to the session life-cycle.

An application can block various ways to end the session with the gtk_application_inhibit() function. Typical use cases for this kind of inhibiting are long-running, uninterruptible operations, such as burning a CD or performing a disk backup. The session manager may not honor the inhibitor, but it can be expected to inform the user about the negative consequences of ending the session while inhibitors are present.

See Also ##

HowDoI: Using GtkApplication, Getting Started with GTK+: Basics

The ApplicationRef type acts as a lightweight Swift reference to an underlying GtkApplication instance. It exposes methods that can operate on this data type through ApplicationProtocol conformance. Use ApplicationRef only as an unowned reference to an existing GtkApplication instance.

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  • ptr 
    Untyped pointer to the underlying `GtkApplication` instance.

    For type-safe access, use the generated, typed pointer application_ptr property instead.

    Declaration

    Swift

    public let ptr: UnsafeMutableRawPointer!
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Application Class

  • Designated initialiser from the underlying C data type

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init(_ p: UnsafeMutablePointer<GtkApplication>)
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  • Designated initialiser from a constant pointer to the underlying C data type

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init(_ p: UnsafePointer<GtkApplication>)
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  • Conditional initialiser from an optional pointer to the underlying C data type

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init!(_ maybePointer: UnsafeMutablePointer<GtkApplication>?)
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  • Conditional initialiser from an optional, non-mutable pointer to the underlying C data type

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init!(_ maybePointer: UnsafePointer<GtkApplication>?)
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  • Conditional initialiser from an optional gpointer

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init!(gpointer g: gpointer?)
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  • Conditional initialiser from an optional, non-mutable gconstpointer

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init!(gconstpointer g: gconstpointer?)
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  • Reference intialiser for a related type that implements ApplicationProtocol

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init<T>(_ other: T) where T : ApplicationProtocol
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  • This factory is syntactic sugar for setting weak pointers wrapped in GWeak<T>

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
static func unowned<T>(_ other: T) -> ApplicationRef where T : ApplicationProtocol
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  • Unsafe typed initialiser. Do not use unless you know the underlying data type the pointer points to conforms to ApplicationProtocol.

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init<T>(cPointer: UnsafeMutablePointer<T>)
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  • Unsafe typed initialiser. Do not use unless you know the underlying data type the pointer points to conforms to ApplicationProtocol.

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init<T>(constPointer: UnsafePointer<T>)
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  • Unsafe untyped initialiser. Do not use unless you know the underlying data type the pointer points to conforms to ApplicationProtocol.

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init(mutating raw: UnsafeRawPointer)
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  • Unsafe untyped initialiser. Do not use unless you know the underlying data type the pointer points to conforms to ApplicationProtocol.

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init(raw: UnsafeMutableRawPointer)
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  • Unsafe untyped initialiser. Do not use unless you know the underlying data type the pointer points to conforms to ApplicationProtocol.

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init(opaquePointer: OpaquePointer)
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  • Creates a new `GtkApplication` instance.

    When using GtkApplication, it is not necessary to call gtk_init() manually. It is called as soon as the application gets registered as the primary instance.

    Concretely, gtk_init() is called in the default handler for the GApplication::startup signal. Therefore, GtkApplication subclasses should chain up in their GApplication::startup handler before using any GTK+ API.

    Note that commandline arguments are not passed to gtk_init(). All GTK+ functionality that is available via commandline arguments can also be achieved by setting suitable environment variables such as G_DEBUG, so this should not be a big problem. If you absolutely must support GTK+ commandline arguments, you can explicitly call gtk_init() before creating the application instance.

    If non-nil, the application ID must be valid. See g_application_id_is_valid().

    If no application ID is given then some features (most notably application uniqueness) will be disabled. A null application ID is only allowed with GTK+ 3.6 or later.

    Declaration

    Swift

    @inlinable
init(applicationID: UnsafePointer<gchar>? = nil, flags: GIO.ApplicationFlags)
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