wxo

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.

Installation & Usage

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

As a library

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

Weather Sources

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.

Motivation

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.

TODO

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