Salawat

Salawat is a lightweight and blazing-fast C++ utility for fetching and displaying Islamic prayer times. It leverages the Al-Adhan API and provides a simple command-line interface, as well as a specialized daemon-like mode for system status bars.

Features

• Accurate Prayer Times: Fetches timings for Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha via the Al-Adhan API.
• Efficient Caching: Limits unnecessary API calls by caching the current day's prayer timings locally at /tmp/salawat_cache.json.
• Bar Mode: Designed seamlessly for status bars like Polybar or Waybar. It continuously monitors the countdown to the next prayer and dynamically updates /dev/shm/prayer_status with live timing information.
• Fast & Lightweight: Built with performance in mind using C++20 and custom stack-allocated string helpers (libutils) for zero-allocation string manipulation and minimal memory footprint.

Dependencies

• A C++20 compatible compiler.
• External Dependencies:
  • nlohmann/json
  • fmt (or native C++20 <format>)
  • OpenSSL (required for HTTPS support)
• Note: httplib (cpp-httplib) is bundled directly within the project's source tree.

Usage

Standard Run

Running salawat directly will load the timings for the day and print them to the standard output:

$ salawat
Fajr     : 05:30
Dhuhr    : 12:45
Asr      : 15:15
Maghrib  : 18:20
Isha     : 19:45

Bar Mode

Bar mode allows salawat to run as a continuous process, writing the current status (such as a countdown to the next prayer) to a shared memory file.

$ salawat -b
# or
$ salawat --bar

This will frequently update /dev/shm/prayer_status. You can configure your status bar (like Polybar, Waybar, or i3blocks) to read from this file using a custom script or module that watches or periodically cats its contents.

Internal Architecture

• Salawat Core: Manages fetching, caching, and parsing the Al-Adhan JSON responses.
• Custom Date / Time Types: Efficiently represent calendar dates and daily times with standard math and helper methods.
• libutils: A lightweight library i wrote included for stack-allocated and static string management (static_str, etc.), minimizing heap allocations during high-frequency status bar updates and more!

License

This project is released under the MIT License.