how can i get Conky to display weather?

Question

I've been strugling to get conky to show the weather, I just installed it and found out that yahoo discontinued the api url which was the one the conky theme was using (http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=1103816&u=c), I've tried changing the url to accuweather and openweather ones and nothing. I just don't understand how this works at all and I have no clue how to get it to work properly, here's the code:

##Weather
${image .jelly-weather-icons/conky_icons/circle2.png -s 190x190}
${texeci 1300 curl -s "http://rss.accuweather.com/rss/liveweather_rss.asp\?metric\=${METRIC}#\&locCode\=$LOCCOD" -o #~/.cache/weather.xml}
${voffset -110}${offset 425}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=20}${execi 1300 grep #"yweather:condition" ~/.cache/weather.xml | grep -o "temp=\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "\"[^\"]*\"" | #grep -o "[^\"]*"}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=8}${voffset -16}o${voffset 14}${font}#${color1}
${execi 1300 cp -f .weather-icons/$(grep "yweather:condition" ~/.cache/weather.xml | grep -o #"code=\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "[^\"]*").png ~/.cache/weather.png}${image #~/.cache/weather.png -p 425,23 -s 35x35}
${offset 420}${voffset -105}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:size=14} Sevilla

btw I found nothing on the internet that could help me out... thanks in advance :)

Edit1: Here is the api that the conky theme saves in the cache/weather.xml http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast?id=6361046&APPID=6be5e3a6e62680c28044791e8fc7b568 I'm slowly understanding how it works

Edit2: This is how the code looks now, I noticed I mistyped some # trying to comment the whole weather part. I just don't understand how conky reads xml (I don't know how to read xml myself but I suppose I can solve that with a few guides of xml :P)

##Weather
${image .jelly-weather-icons/conky_icons/circle2.png -s 190x190}
${texeci 1300 curl -s "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast?id=6361046&APPID=6be5e3a6e62680c28044791e8fc7b568&units=metric" -o ~/.cache/weather.xml}
${voffset -110}${offset 425}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=20}${execi 1300 grep "weather:description" ~/.cache/weather.xml | grep -o "temp=\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "[^\"]*"}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=8}${voffset -16}o${voffset 14}${font}${color1}
${execi 1300 cp -f .weather-icons/$(grep "yweather:condition" ~/.cache/weather.xml | grep -o "code=\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "\"[^\"]*\"" | grep -o "[^\"]*").png ~/.cache/weather.png}${image ~/.cache/weather.png -p 425,23 -s 35x35}
${offset 420}${voffset -105}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:size=14} Sevilla

Edit3: So I finally got it working thanks to @WinEunuuchs2Unix and @steeldriver , this is how the code finally looks for anyone who wants to use it in their conky code:

##Weather

${voffset -80}${offset 435}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=20}${execi 1300 curl -s "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast?id=6361046&APPID=6be5e3a6e62680c28044791e8fc7b568&units=metric" | jq -r '.list[0].main.temp' | awk '{printf("%.0f\n", $1)}'}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=8}${voffset -16}o${voffset 24}${font}${color1}
${execi 1300 cp -f .iconos/$(curl -s "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast?id=6361046&APPID=6be5e3a6e62680c28044791e8fc7b568&units=metric" | jq -r '.list[0].weather[].icon').png ~/.cache/weather.png}${image ~/.cache/weather.png -p 425,20 -s 60x60}
${offset 420}${voffset -115}${font ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro:bold:size=14} Sevilla

Basically what it does is read a json from the openweather url using curl, and with jq search for the values of .list[0].weather[].icon and .list[0].main.temp as for the temperature it outputs a value with 2 decimal digits which I cut out for personal preferences using awk '{printf("%.0f\n", $1)}' the rest of the code is just conky's way to understand where you want it and how you want it. If you want to use it for yourself just change Sevilla for your city, and change curl -s "...your location api url..." note that if you use a different site for your api url you will have to change jq to fit the new json data. Also note that you will have to create a folder with all the icons from this icon list or use your own icons but remember to use the same naming (01d.png, 02d.png, ...) and also don't forget to edit this ${execi 1300 cp -f .iconos/$(curl -s "http:/... and replace .iconos/ with the directory of your folder.

Here if you want to try out the conky theme

Solution 1

Edit June 7, 2020

I have conky on a 4K TV now so there is ample space to expand the height with weather information.

It is very important to select a mono spaced font that supports arrow signs for wind direction. I choose GE Inspira Mono 12 point but had to restore to Ubuntu 10.5 point afterwards:

#------------+
# Brightness |
#------------+
${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1}
${color1}${goto 5}Sun Rise: ${color green}${execpi 300 cat /usr/local/bin/.eyesome-sunrise} ${goto 175}${color1}Set: ${color green}${execpi 300 cat /usr/local/bin/.eyesome-sunset} ${alignr}${color1}Level: ${color green}${execpi 10 cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness}
#------------+
# Weather    |
#------------+
${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1}
#${font GE Inspira Mono:size=12}${alignc}${color green}${execpi 300 curl wttr.in/Edmonton?T0 --silent --max-time 3}${font ubuntu:size=10.5}
${font Dejavu Sans Mono:size=12}${alignc}${color green}${execpi 300 curl wttr.in/Edmonton?T0 --silent --max-time 3}${font ubuntu:size=10.5}

This is what it looks like now:

Yes it is unusually cold for 6 pm on June 7. Worse yet all the rain caused a 20 block power outage a couple hours ago! It was a mixed blessing because I got to install the 32 GB RAM upgrade I bought in March 2020 but was procrastinating on. System is snappier now!

NOTE: Sunrise and Sunset times are fake. I was testing a new function in eyesome today to override the daily automatic retrieval off the internet of Sun Times (aka Twilight times).

---

Original Answer

Weather is too much information to squeeze into my conky display which is already pretty full. So instead I put it in my terminal splash screen:

You can get the same information from the command line which you can call from conky:

$ curl wttr.in/Edmonton?0 --silent --max-time 3

Weather report: Edmonton

     \   /     Clear
      .-.      7..8 °C        
   ― (   ) ―   → 6 km/h       
      `-’      10 km          
     /   \     0.0 mm         

To get your city name for wttr.in see:

• The right way to check the weather https://wttr.in

---

Display an image in conky

I saved a picture of today's weather from darksky.net and displayed it in conky with the ${image} command:

The relevant conky commands are:

#------------+
# Brightness |
#------------+
${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1}
${color1}${goto 5}Rise: ${color green}${execpi 300 cat /usr/local/bin/.eyesome-sunrise} ${goto 155}${color1}Set: ${color green}${execpi 300 cat /usr/local/bin/.eyesome-sunset} ${alignr}${color1}Level: ${color green}${execpi 10 cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness}

#------------+
# Image      |
#------------+
${image /home/rick/Pictures/Weather.png -p 0,1080 -s 400x120}

• I included the section just before for reference
• Notice all the blank lines to make conky window taller to fit in the image
• See: Variables in Conky for more details on ${image} command.

Solution 2

Disclaimer: I don't remember where I got this.

I have a little script weather.sh

#!/bin/sh
#AccuWeather (r) RSS weather tool for conky
#
#USAGE: weather.sh <locationcode>
#
#(c) Michael Seiler 2007

METRIC=0 #Should be 0 or 1; 0 for F, 1 for C

if [ -z $1 ]; then
    echo
    echo "USAGE: weather.sh <locationcode>"
    echo
    exit 0;
fi

curl -s http://rss.accuweather.com/rss/liveweather_rss.asp\?metric\=${METRIC}\&locCode\=$1 | perl -ne 'if (/Currently/) {chomp;/\<title\>Currently: (.*)?\<\/title\>/; print "$1"; }'

Then in the .conkyrc you have

${exec [location of script]/weather.sh [zip code]}

The end result is

Comments

[ajgringo619]

This is a great Conky resource: ifxgroup.net/conky.htm. Another option would be to use inxi.

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

Can you provide a screen mock up of how weather should be presented?

[Jarad Downing]

All these services will require you to register in order to get an api key. It looks like the Maybe this will help: developer.yahoo.com/weather or openweathermap.org/api or developer.accuweather.com. Once you have a 'developer' account you can start pulling data from the sites. The code you have above, most likely, will not work without some editing. Show us what you want then we can help you get there.

[guiverc]

I haven't used conky in years, but I recall using detail from a local files years ago when I used it; so you could use something like wethr (snap) to get details saving to a file (maybe run via cron job) and use conky to just output that file data on screen. (if using wethr it needs write access in current directory to run; and uses symbols that I don't know how conky would handle as I only used simple text files)

[Wonky]

This is the theme deviantart.com/speedracker/art/… , thank you very much for all the responses. I already created an account on openweather so I could use the api key and all, but the problem is that I have no idea at all about how to pull data from the site :facepalm: the little I get to understand is that the code gets some 'yweather' variable from the site and depending on the string, it displays a different icon from a folder included in the theme.

[Wonky]

This is how i actually have it set up pastebin.com/cPVfK3Fn , changed BATT for BAT0 to correctly display my battery percentage and added bold to a few parts of the text to make it more visible with my wallpaper.

[Organic Marble]

Thanks for teaching me about wttr.in!

[Wonky]

any way to display the icon? something like this: deviantart.com/speedracker/art/…

[Wonky]

I just want the weather icon and temp, like in the original theme: deviantart.com/speedracker/art/… I already managed to get the url right and the weather.xml generating correctly now what I don't understand is how conky reads xml, how the theme uses the xml or how do I get to display the weather icon from grep "weather.number" ~/.cache/weather.xml

[Organic Marble]

I don't know. My conky is text only.

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

@OrganicMarble I've never displayed an image in conky either until I just read your comment. So I updated my conky to do just that and put it into my answer.

[Wonky]

Okay thats awesome, now I have a folder with all the icons from openweathermap.org/weather-conditions, what i will try to get done is display the image using something like this image ~/.weather-icons/$(grep "weather.icon" ~/.cache/weather.xml).png reading the weather.xml file that I get from openweather I used the parameter weather.icon from the doc here openweathermap.org/current#parameter but i dont know if grep works that way, ideally what i would want is to read today's weather.icon parameter (lets say 1d) and display the image ~/.weather-icons/1d.png

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

As far as where you got the script from it may have come from here: github.com/rgoomar/i3-wm-config/blob/master/weather.sh

[Organic Marble]

@WinEunuuchs2Unix impressive as usual! I'm fine with my lowly text only weather display but I learned something.

[Lakey]

WinEunuuchs2Unix, in your Conky, how did you display the amount you downloaded "today", "yesterday", "week", "month"?

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

@Lakey Although you can display just downloaded, in this screen Conky is showing combined download and upload totals. See vnstat program for setup.