swaybar_info

About

swaybar_info is a program to be utilized by swaybar that is used by the Sway tiling Wayland compositor.

Changes in What Version

See the Changelog.md for details.

Help Text

 Usage:
   -h | --help                                      Prints help
   --netdev=<device_name>                           Check network traffic on specified device
   --netdev_width=<width>                           Sets the min-width of the netdev output (default 11)
   --netgraph_max_bytes=<bytes>                     Enable "graph" output when polling network traffic
                                                      (Set to "dynamic" instead of a byte count for dynamic sizing)
   --netgraph_size=<size>                           Set the number of characters displayed in the net-graph (size of graph; default 10)
   --netgraph_dyn_display                           Enable showing the current maximum value in the graph
   --interval-sec=<seconds>                         Output at intervals of <seconds> (default 5)
   --acpi-builtin                                   Use "acpi -b" built-in fetching (battery info, with color)
   --regex-cmd=<cmd>[SPLIT]<args...>[SPLIT]<regex>  Use an output of a command as a metric
   --time-format=<date format string>               Set the format string for the date

Usage

# build the "release" build of the program
cargo build --release
# put the "release" build somewhere to be used by swaybar
cp ./target/release/swaybar_info ~/.config/sway/

# Alternatively, get it from crates.io/
cargo install swaybar_info
# The `swaybar_info` binary should be placed in $HOME/.cargo/bin/

Put the following in your ~/.config/sway/config (assuming the binary is at $HOME/.config/sway/swaybar_info):

bar {
    position top
    # Set --netdev=<device> such that <device> is the network device you
    # want to monitor. You can omit --netdev=<device>, but that will also
    # cause the program to omit network traffic stats.
    status_command $HOME/.config/sway/swaybar_info --netdev=enp7s0

    # A "built-in" for "acpi -b" is available, and can be activated with the
    # --acpi-builtin flag:

    #status_command $HOME/.config/sway/swaybar_info --acpi-builtin

    # One can use the "--regex-cmd=<cmd>[SPLIT]<args...>[SPLIT]<regex>" option like so:

    #status_command $HOME/.config/sway/swaybar_info --regex-cmd="acpi[SPLIT]-b[SPLIT][0-9]+%.*"

    # This example gets battery info into the bar.
    # Multiple args should be separated with "[SPLIT]".
    # Note that the <args...> portion is optional.


    # The following uses 24 hour time
    #status_command $HOME/.config/sway/swaybar_info --time-format="%Y-%m-%d %R:%S"
}

Advanced Usage of --regex-cmd

If the regex provided to swaybar_info has two captures, the first capture will be used as the text to be displayed, and the second capture will be expected to be the color string (such as FFFFFF for white, or 44FF44 for a lighter green).

For example, if the script invoked with --regex-cmd has output like the following:

MPD Title | MPD Album | playingCOLORSPLIT44FF44

That sometimes becomes:

MPD is not running

Then this text can be parsed with a regex like:

status_command $HOME/.config/sway/swaybar_info \
'--regex-cmd=$HOME/scripts/mpc/mpcCommand.sh[SPLIT]simple[SPLIT]^\(.\*?\)\(?:COLORSPLIT\([A-F0-9]{6}\)\)?$'

Note that some characters like * or ( had to be escaped because they are being passed verbatim to a shell.

If only one capture is used in the regex string, then that capture will be used for the output text, and the color will be left unspecified (usually defaulting to white).

For a reference of what kind of regex is supported, see this page.

Net graph

The --netgraph_max_bytes=<bytes> arg enables a 10-character-wide text graph showing a history of network traffic. The algorithm checks the larger of bytes sent or received in an interval and compares it to <bytes>. If it is greater, then the graph character will be a "full block" character. If it is less, then the graph character will be something in between out of 9 possible characters (a space, and 8 unicode block characters). Thus, this outputs a history graph of network traffic. A sane value for <bytes> can be 1048576, which is 1 MiB.

Specify "dynamic" instead of a bytecount (such as --netgraph_max_bytes=dynamic) to have the graph dynamically resize based on the maximum amount of bytes transferred in an interval.

When dynamic netgraph is used, swaybar_info can display the maximum value in the netgraph. Use the --netgraph_dyn_display option to enable this. (This only works when dynamic netgraph is enabled with --netgraph_max_bytes=dynamic.)

The size of the netgraph is 10 characters by default, but this can be changed by using --netgraph_size=<size>.

Dependencies

Uses serde_json, serde, chrono, and regex.