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<book id="index" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2003/XInclude">
  <bookinfo>
    <title>libnm Reference Manual</title>
    <releaseinfo>
      for libnm &version;
      The latest version of this documentation can be found on-line at
      <ulink url="https://developer.gnome.org/libnm/stable/">https://developer.gnome.org/libnm/stable/</ulink>.
    </releaseinfo>

    <copyright>
      <year>2012</year>
      <year>2013</year>
      <year>2014</year>
      <year>2015</year>
      <year>2016</year>
      <year>2017</year>
      <holder>The NetworkManager Authors</holder>
    </copyright>

    <legalnotice>
      <para>
	Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
	document under the terms of the <citetitle>GNU Free
	Documentation License</citetitle>, Version 1.1 or any later
	version published by the Free Software Foundation with no
	Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
	Texts. You may obtain a copy of the <citetitle>GNU Free
	Documentation License</citetitle> from the Free Software
	Foundation by visiting <ulink type="http"
	url="http://www.fsf.org">their Web site</ulink> or by writing
	to:

	<address>
	  The Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
	  <street>51 Franklin Street</street> - Fifth Floor,
	  <city>Boston</city>, <state>MA</state> <postcode>02110-1301</postcode>,
	  <country>USA</country>
	</address>
      </para>
    </legalnotice>
  </bookinfo>

  <chapter id="ref-overview">
    <title>Overview</title>
    <section id="intro">
      <title>Introduction to libnm</title>
      <para>
        libnm is a client library for NetworkManager, the standard Linux network
        management service. NetworkManager supports a wide variety of network
        configuration scenarios, hardware devices and protocol families. Most of
        the functionality is exposed on a
        <ulink url="https://developer.gnome.org/NetworkManager/stable/spec.html">D-Bus API</ulink>,
        allowing other tools to use the functionality provided by NetworkManager.
      </para>
      <para>
        libnm provides C language bindings for functionality provided by
        NetworkManager, optionally useful from other language runtimes as well.
      </para>
      <para>
        libnm maps fairly closely to the actual D-Bus API that NetworkManager
        provides, wrapping the remote D-Bus objects as native GObjects,
        mapping D-Bus signals and properties to GObject signals and properties,
        and providing helpful accessor and utility functions.  However, unlike
        the old libnm-util/libnm-glib API, the mapping to the D-Bus API is not
        exact, and various inconveniences and historical anomolies of the D-Bus
        API are papered over.
      </para>
      <para>
        The following is a rough overview of the libnm object structure and
        how to use the various parts of it:
        <mediaobject  id="libnm-overview">
          <imageobject>
            <imagedata fileref="libnm.png" format="PNG"/>
          </imageobject>
        </mediaobject>
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="usage">
      <title>Using libnm</title>
      <simplesect>
        <title>When to use libnm</title>
        <para>
          libnm is fairly simple to use from C. It's based on glib and GObject.
          If your project uses these already you'll find integration libnm with your
          project rather convenient. In fact, the <command>nmcli</command> tool shipped
          with NetworkManager is based on libnm.
        </para>
        <para>
          libnm should be also the way to go if your project does something non-trivial
          with NetworkManager, such as manipulating the connection profiles.
          That is, if you're writing a specialized networking control tool or a desktop
          environment, libnm is probably the right choice. The popular desktop
          environments in fact all use libnm directly or with nm-applet and
          nm-connection-editor that are all based on libnm.
        </para>
        <para>
          An alternative to use of libnm is the use of the
          <ulink url="https://developer.gnome.org/NetworkManager/stable/spec.html">D-Bus API</ulink>
          directly.  This gives you larger flexibility and reduces the overhead of linking
          with the libnm library. This makes sense if your task is simple and you have a good
          D-Bus library at your disposal. Activating a particular connection profile
          from a Python script is a good example of a task that is perfectly simple
          without using libnm.
        </para>
      </simplesect>

      <simplesect>
        <title>How to use libnm</title>
        <para>
          You can use the libnm's C API directly. To do so, all libnm programs need to
          include <filename>NetworkManager.h</filename> that provides necessary definitions.
          The rest of the API is documented in the reference manual.
        </para>
        <informalexample><programlisting><![CDATA[#include <glib.h>
#include <NetworkManager.h>

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
	NMClient *client;

	client = nm_client_new (NULL, NULL);
	if (client)
		g_print ("NetworkManager version: %s\n", nm_client_get_version (client));
}]]></programlisting></informalexample>
        <para>
          Use <command>pkg-config</command> for <varname>libnm</varname> to discover the necessary
          compiler flags.
        </para>
  <screen><prompt>$ </prompt><userinput>cc $(pkg-config --libs --cflags libnm) -o hello-nm hello-nm.c</userinput>
  <prompt>$ </prompt><userinput>./hello-nm</userinput>
  NetworkManager version: &version;
  <prompt>$ </prompt></screen>
        <para>
          Utilize the <varname>PKG_CHECK_MODULES</varname> macro to integrate with an
          autoconf-based build system. It's also recommended to use
          <varname>NM_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED</varname> and <varname>NM_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED</varname>
          macros to tell libnm headers which API version does your application need to work with.
          If you use them, the compiler will warn you when you use functionality that is not
          available in the versions you specified.
        </para>
        <informalexample><programlisting><![CDATA[PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBNM, libnm >= 1.8)
LIBNM_CFLAGS="$LIBNM_CFLAGS -DNM_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED=NM_VERSION_1_8"
LIBNM_CFLAGS="$LIBNM_CFLAGS -DNM_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED=NM_VERSION_1_8"]]></programlisting></informalexample>
        <para>
          You can use libnm from other languages than C with the use of GObject introspection.
          This includes Perl, Python, Javascript, Lua, Ruby and more. The example below shows what the
          typical libnm use in Python would look like.
        </para>
        <informalexample><programlisting><![CDATA[import gi
gi.require_version('NM', '1.0')
from gi.repository import NM

client = NM.Client.new(None)
print ("NetworkManager version " + client.get_version())]]></programlisting></informalexample>
        <para>
          There's <ulink url="https://lazka.github.io/pgi-docs/#NM-1.0">NM-1.0 Python API Reference</ulink>
          maintained a third party that is generated from the introspection metadata.
        </para>
        <para>
          In general, the C API documentation applies to the use GObject introspection
          from other languages, with the calling convention respecting the language's
          customs. Consult the source tree for
          <ulink url="https://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/tree/examples">some examples</ulink>.
        </para>
      </simplesect>
    </section>
  </chapter>

  <chapter>
    <title>Client Object API Reference</title>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-client.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-secret-agent-old.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-object.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-errors.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-dbus-interface.xml"/>
  </chapter>

  <chapter>
    <title>Connection and Setting API Reference</title>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-connection.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-simple-connection.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-connection.xml"/>
    <!-- begin alphabetical -->
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-8021x.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-adsl.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-bluetooth.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-bond.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-bridge.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-bridge-port.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-cdma.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-dcb.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-dummy.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-generic.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-gsm.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-infiniband.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-ip4-config.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-ip6-config.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-ip-config.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-ip-tunnel.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-macsec.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-macvlan.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-olpc-mesh.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-ppp.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-pppoe.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-serial.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-team.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-team-port.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-tun.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-vlan.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-vpn.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-vxlan.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-wimax.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-wired.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-wireless.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-setting-wireless-security.xml"/>
    <!-- end alphabetical -->
  </chapter>

  <chapter>
    <title>Device and Runtime Configuration API Reference</title>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device.xml"/>
    <!-- begin alphabetical -->
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-adsl.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-bond.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-bridge.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-bt.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-dummy.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-ethernet.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-generic.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-infiniband.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-ip-tunnel.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-macsec.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-macvlan.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-modem.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-olpc-mesh.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-team.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-tun.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-vlan.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-vxlan.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-wifi.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-device-wimax.xml"/>
    <!-- end alphabetical -->
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-active-connection.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-vpn-connection.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-remote-connection.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-access-point.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-wimax-nsp.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-ip-config.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-dhcp-config.xml"/>
  </chapter>

  <chapter>
    <title>Utility API Reference</title>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-utils.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-version.xml"/>
  </chapter>

  <chapter>
    <title>VPN Plugin API Reference</title>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-vpn-dbus-interface.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="xml/nm-vpn-editor-plugin.xml"/>
  </chapter>

  <chapter id="object-tree">
    <title>Object Hierarchy</title>
     <xi:include href="xml/tree_index.sgml"/>
  </chapter>
  <index id="api-index-full">
    <title>API Index</title>
    <xi:include href="xml/api-index-full.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include>
  </index>

  <xi:include href="xml/annotation-glossary.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include>
</book>

