A small script which downloads an image of the day from Bing and sets the wallpaper on a Linux KDE.

The script carries out the following.

  1. Makes a request to Bing.com API (https://www.bing.com/HPImageArchive.aspx?format=js&idx=0&n=1) for the latest Image of the day 2. Saves image to disk 3. Connect to dbus and use the plasmashell dbus interface to set wallpaper

Bing returns a JSON object in the following format.

    
    {
       "images":[
          {
             "startdate":"20190928",
             "fullstartdate":"201909282300",
             "enddate":"20190929",
             "url":"/th?id=OHR.ClavijoLandscape_EN-GB0019183029_1920x1080.jpg&rf=LaDigue_1920x1080.jpg&pid=hp",
             "urlbase":"/th?id=OHR.ClavijoLandscape_EN-GB0019183029",
             "copyright":"Autumnal landscape near the town of Clavijo in Spain's Rioja district (© Olimpio Fantuz/eStock Photo)",
             "copyrightlink":"https://www.bing.com/search?q=rioja+province+Spain&form=hpcapt&filters=HpDate%3a%2220190928_2300%22",
             "title":"Wine time",
             "quiz":"/search?q=Bing+homepage+quiz&filters=WQOskey:%22HPQuiz_20190928_ClavijoLandscape%22&FORM=HPQUIZ",
             "wp":true,
             "hsh":"ec4aa405a92622ad1f44ae694fea60c9",
             "drk":1,
             "top":1,
             "bot":1,
             "hs":[
    
             ]
          }
       ],
       "tooltips":{
          "loading":"Loading...",
          "previous":"Previous image",
          "next":"Next image",
          "walle":"This image is not available to download as wallpaper.",
          "walls":"Download this image. Use of this image is restricted to wallpaper only."
       }
    }

Python is used to parse the JSON object and download the image.

The code to connect to the dbus session is below.



    
    def setwallpaper(filepath, plugin = 'org.kde.image'):
            jscript = """
            var allDesktops = desktops();
            print (allDesktops);
            for (i=0;i<allDesktops.length;i++) {
                d = allDesktops[i];
                d.wallpaperPlugin = "%s";
                d.currentConfigGroup = Array("Wallpaper", "%s", "General");
                d.writeConfig("Image", "file://%s")
            }
            """
            bus = dbus.SessionBus()
            plasma = dbus.Interface(bus.get_object('org.kde.plasmashell', '/PlasmaShell'), dbus_interface='org.kde.PlasmaShell')
            plasma.evaluateScript(jscript % (plugin, plugin, filepath))

I’ve added the script into ~/.config/autostart-scripts/ so that it starts on login.

Script is available on Gitlab here - https://gitlab.com/snippets/1942230