Here I share my small script for making weather report in the Xmobar.

String format is:

<weather icon> <temperature in °C>(<feel like temperature in °C>)°C <wind direction>:<wind speed in meters per second>m/s <air humidity %>%.

And each value is wrapped in its own color with <fc="color"> item </fc> command for Xmobar.

Final output looks like this:

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<fc=#FFFF00> </fc> <fc=green>+17</fc>(<fc=green>+17</fc>)°C <fc=white></fc>:<fc=#FF1493>0</fc>m/s <fc=cyan>42%</fc>

The source of weather data is wttr.in web-site, which is produced by this awesome project: chubin/wttr.in.

Motivation

I like Xmobar panel but it has issues with supporting of different colorful emoji icons. And while wttr.in allows to produce quite useful pre-formatted weather reports (curl -s wttr.in/Bonn?format=4) which I could feed directly in the status bar, but unfortunately Noto Color Emoji icons used there are not displayed by Xmobar.

And I decided to write my own script as a workaround. Script is in Python because wttr.in can give away information in JSON format. And processing of JSON in Python is quick and easy.

How it works

Prerequisites

• Running Xmobar (of course, this assumes you most probably use Xmonad window manager)
• Installed one of Nerd Fonts for use in the Xmobar.
  • I use Hack Nerd Font.
• cron for regular weather updates
• python3 has to be installed

Implementation logic

I want to have update of the weather status on the bar every minute while I want to keep number of requests to server as low as possible.

Here is what I do:

1. I place my scripts in the ~/.scripts directory. Hence, my weather-xmobar.py script is placed there.
   • You can put it in any directory you put your own scripts.
2. My weather-xmobar.py script runs every 30 min via cron. And output is printed into the /tmp/weather file. (You can define any interval you like).
3. Xmobar reads status from /tmp/weather file every 10 seconds.
4. In my .xprofile I produce initial /tmp/weather file after boot and login. This is needed to avoid error on Xmobar because after login:
   • Internet connection is not yet available.
   • Therefore /tmp/weather file does not exist and I have to create it.

I prefer use of /tmp because it is tmpfs built in RAM. Hence reading and writing there does is very fast and also do not use any SSD resource.

Config files

crontab -e config:

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# {min} {hour} {day of month} {month} {day of week}     command to be executed
*/30 * * * *        ~/.scripts/weather-xmobar.py > /tmp/weather

Xmobar config (partial)

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...
Config {
    , font = "xft:Hack Nerd Font:style=Regular:pixelsize=16:antialias=true:hinting=light"
    , additionalFonts = [ "xft:Font Awesome 5 Free:style=Solid:pixelsize=16:antialias=true"
                        ]
    , border = NoBorder
    , bgColor = "#1D3030"
    , fgColor = "#D0D0D0"
    , alpha = 245
    ...
    , commands = [ Run UnsafeStdinReader
                   , Run Com "cat" ["/tmp/weather"] "weather" 100
                   ...
                 ]
    , template = "...%UnsafeStdinReader%     <action=`~/.scripts/weather-report.py > /tmp/weather`>%weather%</action>  ..."
    }

action allows to update status on demand, e.g. if after boot it shows status as N/A. Just click on the status text on the Xmobar.

.xprofile initiation line

Instead of simple cat "____N/A____" > /tmp/weather I use my script because it also gives additional information about error.

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~/.scripts/weather-xmobar.py > /tmp/weather &

The script itself

Script you can find on my Github project.