How do you parse the XDG/gnome/kde menu/desktop item structure in c++??

Question

I would like to parse the menu structure for Gnome Panels (the standard Gnome Desktop application launcher) and it's KDE equivalent using c/c++ function calls. That is, I'd like a list of what the base menu categories and submenu are installed in a given machine. I would like to do with using fairly simple c/c++ function calls (with NO shelling out please).

I understand that these menus are in the standard xdg format. I understand that this menu structure is stored in xml files such as:

/home/user/.config/menus/applications.menu

I've looked here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/menu-spec?action=show&redirect=Standards%2Fmenu-spec but all they offer is the standard and some shell files to insert item entries (I don't want shell scripts, I don't want installation, I definitely don't want to create a c-library from the XDG specification. I want to find the existing menu structure). I've looked here: http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/menustructure-13.html.en for more notes on these structures. None of this gives me a good idea of how determine the menu structures using a c/c++ program.

The actual gnome menu structures seem to be a horrifically hairy things - they don't seem to show the menu structure but to give an XML-coded description of all the changes that the menus have gone through since installation. I assume gnome panels parses these file so there's a function buried somewhere to do this but I've yet to find where that function is after scanning library.gnome.org for a couple of days. I've scanned the Nautilus source code as well but Panels seem to exist elsewhere or are burried well.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

After much painful research... it seems the most stable approach is to take the gnome menu parsing code, rip it of the tar ball and use it locally.

The version I used is here: http://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-menus/2.28/gnome-menus-2.28.0.1.tar.gz

This code loudly proclaims that it shouldn't treated as any kind of API so one is forced to, as I said rip it of the gnome tree and keep a local copy for one's own application (gather than dynamically linking to a library).

The KDE version of the menu-parsing code seems like it could be used more transportably but actually depends heavily on KDE's virtual file system. As far as I can tell, the code gnome works stand-alone. The test-file can serve as a template for doing your own parsing.