Data

This chapter contains examples of common sources and methods of ingesting data for your blocks.

• Common Blocks
  • App Launcher
  • Clock
  • Keyboard
    • Layout
    • Indicators
  • Active workspaces and windows
  • System stats
  • Disk space
• Third-party sources
  • i3status
  • conky
  • i3blocks
  • HTTP APIs
  • File
  • Socket

Common Blocks

App Launcher

[[block]]
name='browser'
type = 'text'
value = "<span font='Font Awesome 6 Free 22'></span> "
on_mouse_left = 'chrome'

Clock

[[command]]
name="clock"
command="date '+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S'"
interval=1

[[block]]
name = 'clock'
type = 'text'
value = '${clock:value}'

If you do not need to show seconds, you can make interval smaller.

Keyboard

oatbar ships with keyboard status utility that streams keyboard layouts and indicator values in i3bar format.

If you run it, you will see

❯ oatbar-keyboard
{"version":1}
[
[{"full_text":"layout: us","name":"layout","active":0,"value":"us","variants":"us,ua"},
{"full_text":"caps_lock:off","name":"indicator","instance":"caps_lock","value":"off"},
 ...],

Enable it with

[[command]]
name="keyboard"
command="oatbar-keyboard"

Layout

oatbar-keyboard is designed to work with setxkbmap. For example you set up your layouts on each WM start like this:

setxkbmap -layout us,ua -option grp:alt_space_toggle

Enable oatbar-keyboard and use an enum block:

[[block]]
name = 'layout'
type = 'enum'
active = '${keyboard:layout.active}'
variants = '${keyboard:layout.variants}'
on_mouse_left = "oatbar-keyboard layout set $BLOCK_INDEX"

Indicators

Show indicators, such as caps_lock, scroll_lock and num_lock as follows:

[[block]]
name = 'caps_lock'
type = 'text'
value = '${keyboard:indicator.caps_lock.full_text}'

Active workspaces and windows

oatbar-desktop talks to your WM via EWMH protocol to obtain the information about active workspaces and windows.

❯ oatbar-desktop
{"version":1}
[
[{"full_text":"workspace: 1","name":"workspace","active":0,"value":"1","variants":"1,2,3"},
{"full_text":"window: Alacritty","name":"window_title","value":"Alacritty"}],

[[command]]
name="desktop"
command="oatbar-desktop"

[[block]]
name = 'workspace'
type = 'enum'
active = '${desktop:workspace.active}'
variants = '${desktop:workspace.variants}'
# Optional replacement with icons
replace = [
   ["1",""],
   ["2",""],
   ["3",""]
]
font="Font Awesome 6 Free 13"
on_mouse_left = "oatbar-desktop $BLOCK_INDEX"

[[block]]
name='window'
type = 'text'
value = '${desktop:window_title.value|max:100}'
pango_markup = false  # Window title can happen to have HTML.

System stats

oatbar ships with a oatbar-stats utility that streams system stats in the i3bar format:

• CPU
• Memory
• Network
  • Interface names
  • Running status
  • Address
  • Download and upload rates

There is a lot of data you can display on your blocks. Enable oatbar-stats like this:

[[command]]
name="stats"
command="oatbar-stats"

Restart oatbar and examine the new variables.

oatctl var ls | grep '^stats:'

The example output below.

stats:cpu.full_text=cpu:  2%
stats:cpu.percent=2
stats:memory.free=8744980480
stats:memory.full_text=mem: 73% 32.9 GB
stats:memory.percent=73
stats:memory.total=32915705856
stats:memory.used=24170725376
stats:net.igc0.full_text=igc0: 192.168.0.160
stats:net.igc0.ipv4_0_addr=192.168.0.160
stats:net.igc0.ipv4_0_broadcast=192.168.0.255
stats:net.igc0.ipv4_0_run=true
stats:net.igc0.ipv4_0_up=true
stats:net.igc0.mac_0_addr=48:21:0b:35:ca:08
stats:net.igc0.mac_0_run=true
stats:net.igc0.mac_0_up=true
stats:net.igc0.rx_per_sec=1704
stats:net.igc0.tx_per_sec=1110
...

Entries with full_text are a good start to display directly, if you do not need more fine grained customizations.

[[block]]
name="ethernet"
type="text"
value="${stats:net.igc0.full_text}"

Disk space

Example for /home directory partition:

[[command]]
name="home_free"
command="df -h /home | tail -1 | awk '{print $5}'"
interval=60

[[block]]
name='home_free'
type = 'text'
value = '<b>/home</b> ${home_free:value}'

Third-party sources

Existing bar ecosystems already can provide large mount of useful information. oatbar by-design focuses on making it possible to adapt third-party data sources.

i3status

i3status is a great cross-platform source of information about the system. It supports:

• CPU
• Memory
• Network
• Battery
• Volume

i3status is designed to be used by i3bar, but oatbar supports this format natively. Enable it in ~/.i3status.conf or in ~/.config/i3status/config:

general {
        output_format = "i3bar"
}

Add you plugin as described in the i3status documentation. Prefer simple output format, as you can format it on the oatbar side. Example:

order += cpu_usage

cpu_usage {
   format = "%usage"
}

If you run i3status you will now see

❯ i3status
{"version":1}
[
[{"name":"cpu_usage","markup":"none","full_text":"00%"}]
,[{"name":"cpu_usage","markup":"none","full_text":"02%"}]

In oatbar config:

[[block]]
name='cpu'
type = 'number'
value = "${i3status:cpu_usage.full_text}"
number_type = "percent"
output_format="<b>CPU:</b>${value}"
number_display="text"

If you prefer a progress bar:

number_display="progress_bar"

conky

As i3status, conky can also be a great source of system data.

conky can print it's variables as plain text and oatbar can consume it as multi-line plain text. Example ~/.oatconkyrc:

conky.config = {
    out_to_console = true,
    out_to_x = false,
    update_interval = 1.0,
}

conky.text = [[
$memperc%
$cpu%
]]

If you run conky -c ~/.oatconkyrc you will see repeating groups of numbers:

2%
10%
5%
10%

In oatbar config:

[[command]]
name="conky"
command="conky -c ~/.oatconkyrc"
line_names=["mem","cpu"]

[[block]]
name='cpu'
type = 'number'
value = "${conky:cpu}"
number_type = "percent"

[block.number_display]
type="text"
output_format="<b>CPU:</b>${value}"

[[block]]
name='mem'
type = 'number'
value = "${conky:mem}"
number_type = "percent"

[block.number_display]
type="text"
output_format="<b>MEM:</b>${value}"

i3blocks

i3blocks in a drop-in replacement for i3status to be used in i3bar. If you have existingi i3blocks configs, feel free to plug it directly into oatbar:

[[command]]
name="i3blocks"
command="i3blocks"

You can check which oatbar variables it makes available by running i3blocks in your console.

The indirection between the script, i3blocks and oatbar is not required. You can connect any plugin from the i3block-contrib excellent collection directly into oatbar.

For example:

$ git clone https://github.com/vivien/i3blocks-contrib
$ cd ./i3blocks-contrib/cpu_usage2
$ make
$ ./cpu_usage2 -l "cpu: "
cpu: <span> 39.79%</span>
cpu: <span> 47.06%</span>

As you can see, it inputs only one line of data each interval, so setting line_names is not necessary, however always check for it.

[[command]]
name="cpu_usage2"
command="/path/to/cpu_usage2 -l 'cpu: '"

[[block]]
name="cpu_usage2"
type="text"
value="${cpu_usage2:value}"

HTTP APIs

HTTP JSON APIs that do not require complicated login are extremely easy to integrate using curl and jq.

Explore your JSON first

$ curl 'https://api.ipify.org?format=json'
{"ip":"1.2.3.4"}

jq -r let's you extract a value from a JSON object. Add the command to oatbar config, but make sure to set a sufficient interval not to get banned.

[[command]]
name="ip"
command="curl 'https://api.ipify.org?format=json | jq -r .ip"
interval=1800

[[block]]
name="ip"
type="text"
value="my ip: ${ip:value}"

File

You can use file watching utils to output file contents on any file change. For example for Linux you can use fswatch.

[[command]]
command="cat ./file; fswatch --event Updated ./file | xargs -I {} cat {}"

Socket

Use socat to read from sockets. TCP socket:

[[command]]
command="socat TCP:localhost:7777 -"

SSL socket:

[[command]]
command="socat OPENSSL:localhost:7777 -"

For Unix socket:

[[command]]
command="socat UNIX-CONNECT:/path/to/socket -"