Raymii.org

Recently I was asked to get one value from a json object using only shell tools. The json in question is from a dutch radio station and it lists the current song that is played. Using this together with a few shell commands and notify- send we can show the current song when it changes as a desktop notification. I'd rather use Python or jq if it has to be shell. In this case the co-worker asked to just use simple shell tools and no external dependencies.

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This is the json file, formatted:

# curl -s 'https://api.grootnieuwsradio.nl/playing.json'
{
    "Stream_information":{
        "Name":"grootnieuws_ipad",
        "NameByClient":"grootnieuwsradio_website_aac",
        "Limit":"2000",
        "Account":"calculation",
        "IncomingSignal":"offline",
        "SecureTokenSharedSecret":"",
        "SecureTokenQueryParametersPrefix":"",
        "SecureTokenIncludeClientIPInHash":"false",
        "MultiBitrateEnable":"false",
        "DVREnable":"false",
        "PlayIPWhiteList":"",
        "PublishIPWhitelist":"",
        "SimultaneousConnections":"1729",
        "Auto_recording":"off",
        "PlayingNow":"Joke Buis - Welk Een Vriend Is Onze Jezus",
        "Encoder_visitors_statistics":{
            "REST_URI":"https:\/\/api.streampartner.nl\/grootnieuws_ipad\/stream_information\/encoder_visitors_statistics",
            "Options":[
                "GET"
            ]
        }
    }
}

The field we want is the PlayingNow field. Using sed, a regular expression with a backreference (\1) it can be shown:

sed -n 's|.*"PlayingNow":"\([^"]*\)".*|\1|p'

Example output:

curl -s 'https://api.grootnieuwsradio.nl/playing.json' | sed -n 's|.*"PlayingNow":"\([^"]*\)".*|\1|p'

Joke Buis - Welk Een Vriend Is Onze Jezus

The full script to send the desktop notifications:

#!/bin/bash
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"
if [[ ! -f /tmp/gnr-prev.txt ]]; then touch /tmp/gnr-prev.txt; fi
PREVSONG="$(cat /tmp/gnr-prev.txt)"
curl -s 'https://api.grootnieuwsradio.nl/playing.json' | sed -n 's|.*"PlayingNow":"\([^"]*\)".*|\1|p' > /tmp/gnr-cur.txt
CURSONG="$(cat /tmp/gnr-cur.txt)"
if [[ "$PREVSONG" != "$CURSONG" ]]; then
    mv /tmp/gnr-prev.txt /tmp/gnr.$(date +%s).txt;
    mv /tmp/gnr-cur.txt /tmp/gnr-prev.txt;
    notify-send "GNR: $CURSONG";
fi

Put it in cron for regular execution. Add this to your crontab as well if you use KDE:

DISPLAY=:0.0
XAUTHORITY=/home/remy/.Xauthority

Replace remy with your username.

Tags: bash , bash-bits , curl , json , python , sed , shell , snippets