I like controlling my phone from the comfort of my computer. This includes sending sms. termux provides a way to do so, but the interface is quite low level. Let’s try to do better and take advantage of this situation to introduce a more complicated use case of using parameters in bash.

Let’s start by mocking the use of termux.

dumb_contacts='
[
{
    "name": "Martha Thomas",
    "number": "+123456789"
  },
  {
    "name": "Wendy Hodges",
    "number": "+987654321"
  },
  {
    "name": "Kyle Nguyen",
    "number": "+1122334455"
  },
  {
    "name": "Peter Harris",
    "number": "+5566778899"
}
]
'

termux-contact-names () {
    # would call something like ssh myphone termux-contact-list | jq -r '.[].name'
    echo "$dumb_contacts" | jq -r '.[].name'
}

termux-contact-number () {
    local name="$1"
    # would call termux-run termux-contact-list | jq -r ".[] | select(.name == \"${name}\").number"
    echo "$dumb_contacts" | jq -r ".[] | select(.name == \"${name}\").number"
}

Let’s suppose this code is put under ./lib/termux in the bin folder where the bash commands are put. See this documentation for more information about importing libraries.

Now, let’s use that library to have a nice completion of contacts

The beginning of the script looks like this¹:

#!/bin/bash -eu

source "_clk.sh"

clk_import termux

clk_usage () {
    cat<<EOF
$0

Send a sms to some contacts of mine
--
A:name:$(termux-contact-names|clk_list_to_choice):This contact:{"nargs": -1}
O:--message:str:What to say
EOF
}

clk_help_handler "$@"

So far so good, we can create the command termux.smd.send with that content and start seeing the completion with our contacts names appear. Note the -1 that means we can provide several contacts.

termux sms send Mart

clk termux sms send Mart<TAB>

Martha Thomas

Now, the contacts provided by clk with clk_value (see that doc) are space separated, but the values already contain spaces.

Let’s try running this code for instance directly in the script.

clk_value name

clk termux sms send "Wendy Hodges" "Kyle Nguyen"

Wendy Hodges Kyle Nguyen

See? There is nothing allowing our script to find out whether we are dealing with one, two three or four names.

I cases where the arguments contain complicated stuffs like that, you can simply get the json representation of them in the special CLK____JSON environment variable.

Now, we can do something with them without risking of getting into issues with spaces.

names () {
    echo "${CLK____JSON}"|jq -r '.name[]'
}
numbers () {
    while read name
    do
        termux-contact-number "${name}"
    done < <(names)
}

numbers="$(numbers|paste -s - -d,)"
echo "ssh myphone termux-sms-send -n \"${numbers}\" \"Hello there!\""

Let’s try this:

clk termux sms send "Wendy Hodges" "Kyle Nguyen"

ssh myphone termux-sms-send -n "+987654321,+1122334455" "Hello there!"

Footnotes

¹ Read that doc to find out more about the syntax.