Create keybinding to focus master client in awesome-wm

Question

I would like to create a keybinding to switch focus to the master client. Profjim on this forum thread notes:

To get the master client on the current tag:

 c = awful.client.getmaster() 

I have tried the following, but it causes my ~/.config/rc.lua file to be ignored, which is the behavior if there is an error in the file. Does anyone know the correct syntax?

awful.key({ modkey,          , "e",  awful.client.getMaster()),

Note: "e" shouldn't cause any conflicts if you have the default key bindings.

Edit: Someone on /r/awesomewm knew the syntax to solve my problem:

awful.key({ modkey,          }, "e",  function() client.focus = awful.client.getmaster(); client.focus:raise() end), 

Answer 1

Lets start with the syntax errors; from the documentation it seems that awful.key is a table, not a function. and it would presumably contain key s ...which are hash tables, not sequences.

Finally your table syntax is wrong; a field may not be syntactically empty, it must have a listed value, even if that value is nil .

So basically you are trying to pass the wrong kind of value to something that can't be called.

---

As for how to do it correctly...the documentation is confusing, and apparently I'm not the only one that thinks so.

* deep breath *

okay, awful.new(...) creates key binders(?), and awful.key contains key bindings, so clearly we have to put the results of the first into the second.
the code on your link is but a pointer, and only covers focusing the window, not creating a keybinding.

It seems like you want something like this:

function do_focus()
    current = client.focus
    master  = awful.client.getmaster()
    if current then
        client.focus = master
        master:raise()
    end
end

table.insert(awful.key, awful.new (modkey, 'e', nil, do_focus) )

Bare in mind that I have no way of testing the above code.