lemmyverse: find communities from the command line
lemmyverse: search lemmy communities from the command-line. Thanks to the data HTTP API from lemmyverse.net! This is not really as polished as I like but, hey, in the interest of having a lively Lemmy I thought I’d share anyway :)
Usage
lemmyverse searches community names and descriptions using a regular expression:
<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">lemmyverse pattern
</span>
Find communities about motorcycles:
<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">$ lemmyverse motorcycle
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] All Things motorcycles
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] All Things motorcycles
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] All Things motorcycles
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] Community for BMW motorcycles. A place to share
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] A community to discuss all things BMW cars & motorcycles.nFeel free to show off your new vehicle/parts
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] A discussion area for Buell motorcycles.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] A community for pictures and videos of people using motorcycles to transport things in a creative manner.nnThis includes
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] This community is for all things motorcycle related. At a later point and with enough traction gained
</span><span style="color:#323232;">...
</span>
Find communities for the Plan 9 operating system:
<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">$ lemmyverse '(plan9)|(Plan 9)'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[email protected] Discussions on the Plan9 operating system.
</span>
Why?
I run relatively slow hardware and I’m travelling in Bali, Indonesia at the moment. Loading lemmyverse.net in a web browser takes ages and gets the laptop fans spinning (it’s hot here!). So I had some fun creating a tiny command-line program to find Lemmy communities using classic UNIX tools awk(1), tr(1), grep(1) etc.
More info
See the man page:
<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">LEMMYVERSE(1) General Commands Manual LEMMYVERSE(1)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">NAME
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> lemmyverse - find lemmy communities
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">SYNOPSIS
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> lemmyverse pattern
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">DESCRIPTION
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> lemmyverse finds Lemmy communities indexed by lemmyverse.net using the
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> given regular expression as interpreted by grep(1). Both the names and
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> descriptions of the communities are searched.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> On first run, a local community database must be generated. The full
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> community index is downloaded from https://lemmyverse.net using curl(1),
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> transformed, then stored in the user cache directory. To regenerate the
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> database, remove the file and run lemmyverse again.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">FILES
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> communities
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Community database from lemmyverse.net.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ENVIRONMENT
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> lemmyverse uses the following environment variables:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> XDG_CACHE_DIR
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> The directory to store the community database. If unset,
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> $HOME/.cache/lemmyverse is used.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">EXAMPLES
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Find communities for the Plan 9 operating system:
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> lemmyverse '(plan9)|(Plan 9)'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> List all communities from the instance lemmy.sdf.org:
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> lemmyverse '@lemmy.sdf.org'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">EXIT STATUS
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> The lemmyverse utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">SEE ALSO
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> grep(1), curl(1), https://lemmyverse.net
</span>