wxo
is primarily a command line utility for retrieving "real-time-ish" current
weather conditions for a given location.
The default output to stdout
is formatted for use in minimalist window manager
status bars such as dwmblocks or Goblocks on dwm. All output is
text (UTF-8 text); there are no icons or colours to make your minimalist life
cluttered.
Results are cached and expire by default in 5-10 minutes; expiry depends on the wx data provider's daily usage limits.
Get the latest:
go install github.com/solutionroute/wxo/cmd/wxo@latest
Using wxo
with OpenWeathermap.org requires a free account and API key.
Run wxo
for a usage screen. Note: You must provide the WXO_APIKEY environment
variable, either on the command line, or as part of your permanent environment.
Example:
$ WXO_APIKEY=yoursecretkey wxo -lat 49.123 -long -123.78
My dwm config feeding wxo output to Goblocks status bar
Example output without a weather alert:
Overcast Clouds 2.5C ↖NNW 3.2km/h
Some weather alerts:
!Extreme Cold! Clear Sky -27.9C ↖WNW 29.6km/h
!Flood Advisory! Overcast Clouds 40.3F ←W 3.6mph
Multiple alerts are concatenated and may be truncated (...
):
!Moderate Rain-Flood Warning/Moderate Coa...! Overcast Clouds 10.5C ↗ENE 5.3km/h
Limited internationalization is available and is weather data provider dependent. Alert text may not be available in other languages.
# Vielha, Spain
# wxo -lat 42.701287 -long 0.793591
en: !Moderate Wind Warning/Moderate Avalanche...! Overcast Clouds 4.7C ↑N 12.3km/h
# wxo -lat 42.701287 -long 0.793591 -lang es
es: !Moderate Wind Warning/Moderate Avalanche...! Nubes 4.7C ↑N 12.3km
While it wasn't written for the purpose, the package could be used as a library
for accessing various weather data sources. The wxo cmd main.go
provides an
example:
client := owm.NewWeatherClient(apiKey, latitude, longitude, units, lang)
wx, err := client.Fetch() // returns a SiteData object
Currently wxo
supports:
- OpenWeathermap.org via their "One Call" API; you'll need a free API key. The free tier provides 1,000 "One Call" requests a day.
As a distance runner, weather is important to me! As a weather geek, I don't
need an excuse. I want to see seeing current temp, winds, and alerts on my dwm
status bar; here's a relevant excerpt from my Goblocks config file:
"actions":
[
{
"prefix": "",
"updateSignal": "36",
"command": "WXO_APIKEY=myOWMkey /home/mw/go/bin/wxo -lat 49.2605 -long -123.1133 -units metric",
"suffix": "",
"timer": "10m"
},
...
]
A hot-key issuing a shell command kill -36 $(pidof goblocks)
, causes
goblocks
to run the weather "block" and update the weather status line,
subject to the default cache expiry (5 minutes).
Other Solutions:
- wttr.in is used by many for status bar updates via
curl
, but I found the data returned was often partially incorrect (wind info in particular) or quite out of date, in addition to lacking weather alert data.
wxo
was born on January 8th, 2022, and will continue to evolve with a few more
features--in rough order of priority:
Cache output- Specify cache expiry, subject to weather data provider daily limits
- Custom output templates
- Other weather data providers