🌺 watchhttp

Run command periodically and expose latest STDOUT as HTTP endpoint

• 300LOC
• pure Go
• automatic browser refresh via Refresh header
• animations
• minimal dependencies
• no Javascript
• no WebAssembly

go install github.com/nikolaydubina/watchhttp@latest

Live animated delta of from transformed cURL

JSON

watchhttp -t 5s -json -d -- /bin/sh -c 'curl "https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=52.52&longitude=13.41&current_weather=true&hourly=temperature_2m,relativehumidity_2m,windspeed_10m" | jq "del(.hourly)"'

example-delta-3.mov

YAML

watchhttp -t 5s -yaml -d -- /bin/sh -c 'curl "https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=52.52&longitude=13.41&current_weather=true&hourly=temperature_2m,relativehumidity_2m,windspeed_10m" | jq "del(.hourly)" | yq -P'

Untitled.mov

Fetch and transform periodically with curl and jq

watchhttp -t 5s -json -- /bin/sh -c 'curl "https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=52.52&longitude=13.41&current_weather=true&hourly=temperature_2m,relativehumidity_2m,windspeed_10m" | jq "del(.hourly)"'

$ curl localhost:9000/
{
  "latitude": 52.52,
  "longitude": 13.419998,
  "generationtime_ms": 0.635981559753418,
  "utc_offset_seconds": 0,
  "timezone": "GMT",
  "timezone_abbreviation": "GMT",
  "elevation": 38,
  "current_weather": {
    "temperature": 1.3,
    "windspeed": 8.4,
    "winddirection": 220,
    "weathercode": 3,
    "time": "2023-03-12T09:00"
  },
  "hourly_units": {
    "time": "iso8601",
    "temperature_2m": "°C",
    "relativehumidity_2m": "%",
    "windspeed_10m": "km/h"
  }
}

watchhttp -t 2s -json -- /bin/sh -c "curl --location 'api.coincap.io/v2/rates/bitcoin' | jq"

Live graph of Kubernetes resources with kubectl and graphviz

go install github.com/nikolaydubina/jsonl-graph@latest

watchhttp -t 3s -p 9000 -- /bin/sh -c "kubectl get pods -o json | jq '.items[] | {to: (.kind + \":\" + .metadata.name), from: (.metadata.ownerReferences[].kind + \":\" + .metadata.ownerReferences[].name)}' | jsonl-graph | dot -Tsvg"

Live status of Kubernetes resource with kubectl

watchhttp -t 3s -p 9000 -- kubectl describe deployment hello-minikube

Live system metrics with vmstat

watchhttp vmstat

$ curl localhost:9000/
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 16384 bytes)
Pages free:                             1616097.
Pages active:                            914186.
Pages inactive:                          579357.
Pages speculative:                       829846.
Pages throttled:                              0.
Pages wired down:                        164337.
Pages purgeable:                         125376.
"Translation faults":                2059157267.
Pages copy-on-write:                   58902729.
Pages zero filled:                   1573609407.
Pages reactivated:                       577992.
Pages purged:                          17881481.
File-backed pages:                      1300312.
Anonymous pages:                        1023077.
Pages stored in compressor:              202931.
Pages occupied by compressor:             35364.
Decompressions:                          973775.
Compressions:                           1404319.
Pageins:                               23222205.
Pageouts:                                 12866.
Swapins:                                 435185.
Swapouts:                                477406.

Watch file tail or cat

watchhttp tail /var/log/system.log

$ curl localhost:9000/            
Mar 12 16:16:07 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics
Mar 12 16:32:06 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics
Mar 12 16:48:15 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics
Mar 12 17:04:22 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics
Mar 12 17:22:24 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics
Mar 12 17:33:45 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro MobileDeviceUpdater[4765]: Entered:_AMMuxedVersion2DeviceConnected, mux-device:4541
Mar 12 17:33:45 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics
Mar 12 17:33:45 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[1146]: Entered:_AMMuxedVersion2DeviceConnected, mux-device:4541
Mar 12 17:33:47 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro AMPDevicesAgent[67221]: Entered:_AMMuxedVersion2DeviceConnected, mux-device:4541
Mar 12 17:44:54 Nikolays-MacBook-Pro syslogd[532]: ASL Sender Statistics

---

Appendix A: Related Work

• as of 2023-03-12, awesome-go does not mention any tools that can do this
• netcat can not do this
• mantyr/jsonhtml is experimental JSON to HTML renderer, assignment, no go mod
• shovon/json-pretty-printer is experimental JSON to HTML renderer, no reflect, direct JSON string parsing, assignment, no go mod
• https://github.com/marchoy/pretty-printer is experimental JSON prettifier to HTML renderer, adds syntax highlighting, no reflect, direct JSON string parsing, no tests, no go mod

Appendix B: Alternative with file server + bash

Similar effect can be achieved with file server and bash, albeit headers would not be set.

package main

import "net/http"

func main() { http.ListenAndServe(":9000", http.FileServer(http.Dir("."))) }

$ while sleep 5; do <something> > <file> ; done

Appendix C: Paths Not Taken

Expose STDIN as HTTP endpoint

The problem is how to differentate separate responses? Is empty line valid separator of responses? There are clearly interesting eaxmples with UNIX pipes and tail -f, logs, WebSockets. However, that may need separate tool.

Stream top, k9s, datadash to browser in HTML

First, those tools re-render terminal output at their own interval. It would take some effort, but effectivelly this is emulating terminal rendering in browser. Issue of converting terminal escaped ASCII to HTML output colors. As next step, you would want to also pass to STDIN through browser too. Overall, this is separate problem of exposing terminal throuhg browser.

Appendix D: Interesting free real time data sources

• https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis

Stock Sentiment in /r/Wallstreetbets

• https://tradestie.com/apps/reddit/api/
• curl -XGET 'https://tradestie.com/api/v1/apps/reddit'
• no auth
• no limit

Weather forecast

• curl https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=52.52&longitude=13.41&current_weather=true&hourly=temperature_2m,relativehumidity_2m,windspeed_10m
• no auth
• no limit

Bitcoin rates

• https://docs.coincap.io/#intro
• curl --location 'api.coincap.io/v2/rates/bitcoin'
• no auth
• no limit

Appenidx E: Inspiration and Other Tools

Charles Schwab quick stock buy liver ticker