Parseable Output

[tylergets]

Love the project

I wanted throw up an issue to see if there is any interested in adding a parseable (maybe JSON?) output mode to ddcutil; This would make it easy for other applications to interface with it.

I would be happy to donate or contribute to this if theres interest and it'd be accepted into the project. Thanks!

[rockowitz]

Take a look at --brief output for detect and getvcp. It's intended to be machine readable. The getvcp output is the same form as is used by dumpvcp/loadvcp. Does this do what you need?

That said, it would be cleaner if there were a standard format for parseable external files that was used by dumpvcp/loadvcp and user supplied feature definitions, and which could apply to getvcp and detect. I've considered the enhancement, but the task is no where near the top of the to-do list. I'm certainly open to a contribution that does this (perhaps using YAML rather than JSON) and would be happy to provide guidance.

[mwoodson-cb]

@rockowitz this project is really really cool!

However, I'd agree with @tylergets, it'd be really helpful to have parsable output. JSON would be a standard options.

For example, it's really hard to parse this output:

# ddcutil detect --brief
Invalid display
   I2C bus:          /dev/i2c-1
   DRM connector:    card0-HDMI-A-1
   Monitor:          GSM:LG HDR WQHD+:203NTSUGW078

Display 1
   I2C bus:          /dev/i2c-2
   DRM connector:    card0-DP-1
   Monitor:          AOC:24G2W1G4:

Like, i want to associate the different Displays to Monitors. This is hard to do with this format!

[rockowitz]

As I've said, I think this enhancement makes sense. I don't, however, see it rising to the top of my todo list any time soon. The enhancement would entail modifying a well-contained portion of the large code base, and so is an ideal candidate for a user contribution.