NAME
wicked - a lua library for dynamic widgets in awesome
SYNOPSIS
None
DESCRIPTION
wicked is a library, written in lua, for easy creation and management
of dynamic awesome statusbar widgets, from the rc.lua configuration
file.
USAGE
To use wicked, put require("wicked") at the top of your rc.lua, from
then on, create your widgets as normal and call wicked.register() to
register them to wicked.
wicked.register(widget, widget_type, format, update_interval,
data_field, padding)
widget
Use the widget created by widget for this argument.
widget_type
Enter one of the possible widget type functions or a customised one
here, see the WIDGET TYPES section.
format
Format can be either a string argument where $1,$2,$3,etc. will be
replaced by their respective values, or a function called with the
arguments (widget, arguments), arguments being a table of the values
otherwise inserted into the string, if it is a function, its return
value will be used to populate the widget. Note that some widget types
might not need or use this parameter.
update_interval
The amount of seconds it waits between updating this widget, defaults
to 1.
data_field
If you want to feed the data into a graph or progressbar, put the bar
or plot name you want to use in here.
padding
To prevent widgets jumping about your statusbar all the time, you can
specify a padding value here, the number given here represents the
minimum amount of digits that the widget’s output has to contain (ie
specifying 2 padds values under 10 with one zero, specifying 3 padds
values under 100 with one zero and values under 10 with two zeros, etc)
If the widget type supports it, you can specify a table with different
numbers, the first number being the padding for the first value the
type would return, the second number for the second value, etc.
OTHER FUNCTIONS
The following functions are also provided by wicked.
wicked.unregister(widget, keep)
Unregister all updates associated with a widget. Keep is optional
(defaults to false), and if true, the widget will only be suspended,
ready to be reactivated by the activate function later.
wicked.suspend()
Suspend all widget updates, useful if you are running in low-power mode
and want to save battery for a while.
wicked.activate(widget)
Restarts all widgets that were suspended either from wicked.suspend(),
or by calling wicked.unregister() with keep=true. Widget is optional,
if given, only that widget will be activated, defaults to all widgets.
wicked.regregister(reg)
wicked.register() and wicked.unregister() both return a reg object,
this contains information about the widget and the updates that should
be sent to it, you can pass this reg object into regregister after
unregistering it, and it will be reregistered (or activated if it was
only suspended).
wicked.enable_caching(widget_type)
Enable caching of the values returned by a custom widget_type. Note
that all widget_type functions included in wicked already have caching
enabled by default.
WIDGET TYPES
Widget types consist of functions that take the "format" argument given
to wicked.register as the first argument, the "padding" argument as the
second, and return a table of values to insert in the format string,
creators of custom widget types should note that the format argument
may be a function as well as a string.
For backwards compatibility purposes, if a string X is given as
widget_type, it will use 'wicked.widgets.X' as the widget type.
wicked.widgets.date
The date widget type uses the output of the ‘os.date‘ command to
populate the widget, if format is given, it will be passed as the
FORMAT argument to ‘os.date‘.
wicked.widgets.cpu
The cpu widget type outputs the current cpu usage in percentages,
calculated over the duration of it’s update_interval. Use $1 inside the
format string to display the total usage percentage, $2 to show it for
your first cpu core only, $3 for the second core, etc.
wicked.widgets.mem
The memory widget type outputs four things, $1 will be replaced with
the current memory usage in percentages, $2 will be replaced with the
total used memory in Mb, $3 with the total amount memory available to
the system, and $4 with the amount of free memory.
wicked.widgets.swap
The swap widget type outputs the same values as the memory widget type,
about the amount of swap in use/available.
wicked.widgets.mpd
The mpd widget type outputs the song currently playing on the music
player daemon, note that the ‘mpc‘ application needs to be installed
and configured in order to use this.
wicked.widgets.mocp
The mocp widget type outputs the song currently playing on the mocp
server. Use $1 inside the format string to display the current song. A
maxlength can be given to the wicked.register() function which will cut
the songname in two when exeeded and displays the first and last part.
A typical functioncall looks like this: wicked.register(mocpwidget,
'mocp', 'MOC: $1', 1, nil, 50). Here 50 is the max amount of characters
displayed of $1.
wicked.widgets.fs
The fs widget type can display size and usage information about
currently mounted filesystems, use ${mountpoint datatype} inside the
format string to display that data, e.g. ${/ avail} displays the free
space on the partition mounted on /. Available datatypes are 'used',
'size', 'usep' (Usage in %) and 'avail'.
wicked.widgets.net
The net widget type displays usage information about your networks, in
the format string, ${interface type} will be replaced with with that
value, possible types are: rx, tx, up, down. You can suffix the type
with _b, _kb, _mb or _gb, to display the information in those units.
wicked.widgets.uptime
The uptime widget type displays information about how long your machine
has been on (or "up"). Use $1 for the total number of seconds up, $2
for the number of days, $3 for the number of hours, $4 for the number
of minutes and $5 for the number of seconds.
CUSTOM TYPES
You can create your own custom widgets easily, an example of a widget
that returns the output of a specific command is:
mywidget = widget({
type = 'textbox',
name = 'mywidget'
})
function run_script()
local filedescriptor = io.popen('my_nifty_script.py')
local value = filedescriptor:read()
filedescriptor:close()
return {value}
end
-- Runs 'my_nifty_script.py' every 10 seconds and puts its output into the widget
wicked.register(mywidget, run_script, "$1", 10)
As you can see, the type function returns a table of values to insert
into the format string, the first value in the table will be used in
place of $1, the second in place of $2, etc.
If you want to register the same function multiple times, it is a good
idea to enable caching so that your function is only called once in
each interval. To do this call the enable_caching function like so:
wicked.enable_caching(run_script)
FORMAT FUNCTIONS
You can use a function instead of a string as the format parameter,
with this, you are able to check the value returned by wicked and
change the output accordingly. The format function will get the widget
as its first argument, and a table with the values otherwise inserted
into the format string as its second argument, and should return the
text to be used for the widget.
An example that uses a format function in order to hide the mpd widget
when there is no song playing:
mpdwidget = widget({
type = 'textbox',
name = 'mpdwidget'
})
wicked.register(mpdwidget, wicked.widgets.mpd,
function (widget, args)
if args[1]:find("volume:") == nil then
return ' <span color="white">Now Playing:</span> '..args[1]
else
return ''
end
end)
USAGE EXAMPLES
Put these snippets into your rc.lua (usually located at
~/.config/awesome/rc.lua) to see what they do, don’t forget to add the
widgets to your statusbar.
A simple 'Now Playing' widget
mpdwidget = widget({
type = 'textbox',
name = 'mpdwidget'
})
wicked.register(mpdwidget, wicked.widgets.mpd,
' <span color="white">Now Playing:</span> $1')
A memory usage monitor, with padding
memwidget = widget({
type = 'textbox',
name = 'memwidget'
})
wicked.register(memwidget, wicked.widgets.mem,
' <span color="white">Memory:</span> $1 ($2Mb/$3Mb)',
{2, 4, 4})
A filesystem usage indicator
fswidget = widget({
type = 'textbox',
name = 'fswidget'
})
wicked.register(fswidget, wicked.widgets.fs,
' <span color="white">FS:</span> ${/ used}/${/ size} (${/ usep} used)', 120)
A network interface monitor (for eth0)
netwidget = widget({
type = 'textbox',
name = 'netwidget'
})
wicked.register(netwidget, wicked.widgets.net,
' <span color="white">NET</span>: ${eth0 down} / ${eth0 up} [ ${eth0 rx} // ${eth0 tx} ]')
SEE ALSO
awesome(1) awesomerc(5)
AUTHORS
Lucas de Vries <lucas@glacicle.com[1]>
NOTES
1. lucas@glacicle.com
mailto:lucas@glacicle.com
05/18/2010