Small terminal updates that bring joy | Dina Muscanell's DevOps Blog

Start making opening your terminal a joy

I've been using iTerm2 and zsh for a while now and I love it. However, it can feel a bit monotonous after a while. So, I've added a few small updates to make it more enjoyable.

Most of the days I spend working inside, and not in most well lit areas. Working from home, is great but sometimes I just want to see the weather outside with out having to google it or grab my phone.

I often take walks during the take, especially when the weather is nice. So I wanted a quick way to see if I wanted to go on a walk outside and if I need to grab a jacket or sunglasses.

Adding a welcome message

I opened my .zshrc file and added a function that prints a welcome message to the terminal and shows me the weather. I am always opening the terminal anyways, so why not make it more useful.

function show_welcome_message() {
  if [[ -z $WELCOME_MESSAGE_SHOWN ]]; then
    echo "\n"
    echo "╭──────────────── ⟡ ────────────────╮"
    echo -n "│ 📅 " && date '+%A, %B %d %Y' | lolcat -f -F 0.5

    # Replace the below with your coordinates: https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
    local points=$(curl -s -m 2 -H "User-Agent: (Terminal Welcome Message, YOUR_EMAIL)" \
      "https://api.weather.gov/points/{latitude},{longitude}")

    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
      # Extract the forecast URL using jq
      local forecast_url=$(echo $points | grep -o '"forecast": *"[^"]*"' | cut -d'"' -f4)

      if [[ ! -z "$forecast_url" ]]; then
        # Get the forecast data
        local weather=$(curl -s -m 2 -H "User-Agent: (Terminal Welcome Message, YOUR_EMAIL)" "$forecast_url")

        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
          # Parse the current period's data
          local temp=$(echo $weather | grep -o '"temperature": *[0-9]*' | head -1 | awk '{print $2}')
          local condition=$(echo $weather | grep -o '"shortForecast": *"[^"]*"' | head -1 | cut -d'"' -f4)

          if [[ ! -z "$temp" ]]; then
            echo -n "│ 🌡  ${temp}°F"
          else
            echo "│    Temperature: Unavailable"
          fi
          if [[ ! -z "$condition" ]]; then
            echo " and ${condition}"
          else
            echo "│Condition: Unavailable"
          fi
        else
          echo "│ 🌡  Weather data unavailable"
        fi
      else
        echo "│ 🌡  Forecast URL not found"
      fi
    else
      echo "│ 🌡  Weather data unavailable"
    fi

    echo "╰──────────────── ⟡ ────────────────╯"
    echo "\n"
    export WELCOME_MESSAGE_SHOWN=1
  fi
}

# Add to precmd functions
precmd_functions=( show_welcome_message $precmd_functions )

Here's what it looks like

terminal welcome message

Small wins

Some days it's nice to spend a little time making your job more enjoyable. Why not? It's what we spend the majority of our day doing.

Is this the best code I have ever written? No. But it is a fun way to start my day. Do I like that it shows today's date in a rainbow gradient? Yes.