I found a couple of scripts that would work off a folder (such as Gnome Wallpaper Changer), but I wanted a script/app that used the Gnome wallpaper manager. No point managing wallpaper in two separate places, and when pulling them out of a folder, Gnome doesn't know whether they should be stretched, tiled, centred, etc, etc.
To meet my needs, I threw together the following script:
#!/usr/bin/php
define(DELAY,30 * 60);//Delay between backgrounds, in seconds
define(GNOME_BACKGROUND_FILE,'/home/nick/.gnome2/backgrounds.xml');//XML file containing backgrounds, as per gnome
function getBackgrounds($file = GNOME_BACKGROUND_FILE){
try{
$backgrounds_xml = @new SimpleXMLElement($file,null,true);
} catch (Exception $e){
echo "Couldn't open '$file' to get list of backgrounds\n";
die;
}
$backgrounds = $backgrounds_xml->xpath('wallpaper[@deleted="false"]');
shuffle($backgrounds);
return $backgrounds;
}
function setBackground(SimpleXMLElement $background){
$file = (string)$background->filename;
$options = (string)$background->options;
if(!file_exists($file)) return false;
exec( 'gconftool -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename -t string "'.$file.'";'.
'gconftool -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options -t string "'.$options.'"');
return true;
}
do {
$backgrounds = getBackgrounds();
$backgrounds_exist = false;
foreach ($backgrounds as $background){
if(setBackground($background)){
$backgrounds_exist = true;
sleep(DELAY);
}
}
}while ($backgrounds_exist);
echo "None of the backgrounds could be found\n";
It could be tweaked relatively easily to take command line input and/or make use of the other elements available from the XML file, but, as it is, it does just enough for me. Hopefully someone will find it useful, even it's just as a base to customise to their needs.
