GtkRecentManager

GtkRecentManager manages and looks up recently used files.

Each recently used file is identified by its URI, and has meta-data associated to it, like the names and command lines of the applications that have registered it, the number of time each application has registered the same file, the mime type of the file and whether the file should be displayed only by the applications that have registered it.

The recently used files list is per user.

GtkRecentManager acts like a database of all the recently used files. You can create new GtkRecentManager objects, but it is more efficient to use the default manager created by GTK.

Adding a new recently used file is as simple as:

GtkRecentManager *manager;

manager = gtk_recent_manager_get_default ();
gtk_recent_manager_add_item (manager, file_uri);

The GtkRecentManager will try to gather all the needed information from the file itself through GIO.

Looking up the meta-data associated with a recently used file given its URI requires calling gtk_recent_manager_lookup_item():

GtkRecentManager *manager;
GtkRecentInfo *info;
GError *error = NULL;

manager = gtk_recent_manager_get_default ();
info = gtk_recent_manager_lookup_item (manager, file_uri, &error);
if (error)
  {
    g_warning ("Could not find the file: %s", error->message);
    g_error_free (error);
  }
else
 {
   // Use the info object
   gtk_recent_info_unref (info);
 }

In order to retrieve the list of recently used files, you can use gtk_recent_manager_get_items(), which returns a list of GtkRecentInfo.

Note that the maximum age of the recently used files list is controllable through the GtkSettings:gtk-recent-files-max-age property.