xdg-settings and xdg-mime query fail with status 4 in kde 5

[Vikash]

Description: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release: 16.04

xdg-utils:
  Installed: 1.1.1-1ubuntu1

I ran into the chrome default browser bug after updating : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1509139

I tried the fix there and found it was not working.

So to debug the issue i tried

xdg-settings get default-web-browser

expected: google-chrome.desktop

result: no output to stdio, it fails with status code 4

I also tried

xdg-mime query default text/html

expected: google-chrome.desktop

result: no output to stdio, it fails with status code 4

Further Info.:
Both of these commands show correct output if executed as sudo

[Vikash (master-bvik)]

I debugged xdg-mime and found the error is generated in the line 1005 in function defapp_kde()

trader_result=`$KTRADER $MIMETYPE "$MIME" $SERVICETYPE Application 2>/dev/null \
            | grep DesktopEntryPath | head -n 1 | cut -d ':' -f 2 | cut -d \' -f 2`

trader_result gets value empty string because grep DesktopEntryPath returns empty string, i have no idea what it is supposed to be either

The actual output of $KTRADER $MIMETYPE "$MIME" $SERVICETYPE Application 2>/dev/null is:

mimetype is : text/html
servicetype is : Application
got 9 offers.
/usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop
/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
/usr/share/applications/rstudio.desktop
/usr/share/applications/org.kde.kate.desktop
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop
/usr/share/applications/kde4/okularApplication_txt.desktop
/usr/share/applications/emacs24.desktop
/usr/share/applications/vim.desktop
/usr/share/applications/emacs24-term.desktop

Which means grep DesktopEntryPath doesn't do anything and it is not an environment variable either it is not being set anywhere in the xdg-mime script.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.