How to: Build a "generic observer" widget for the awesome window manager

If you want a widget for awesome Show archive.org snapshot that runs a command regularly (every X seconds) and puts the output into your awesome panel, this is for you.

Put the code below into your ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua. It supplies two methods:

• execute_command will run a command and return its output. Multiple lines will be joined into one line. The code is from the awesome wiki Show archive.org snapshot .

• widget_with_timeout is a method that takes a command to run and a timeout in seconds. It'll return an object which contains a widget that you can put into your panel.
  ^
  -- From: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Awesome_3_configuration
  function execute_command(command)
  local fh = io.popen(command)
  local str = ""
  for i in fh:lines() do
  str = str .. i
  end
  io.close(fh)
  return str
  end

  -- Helper function to build all you need
  function widget_with_timeout(command, seconds)
  local object = {}
  object.command = command
  object.widget = widget({ type = "textbox" })

  Copyobject.update = function ()
    local result = execute_command(object.command)
    object.widget.text = " " .. awful.util.escape(result) .. " "
  end
  
  object.timer = timer({ timeout = seconds })
  object.timer:add_signal("timeout", object.update)
  object.timer:start()
  
  object.update() -- Initialize immediately
  return object
  

  end

Now use it in your rc.lua like this:

Copy-- Get current track from DeaDBeeF, every 3 seconds
nowplaying = widget_with_timeout('deadbeef --nowplaying "%a - %t"', 3)

-- Remember to add the widget to your panel:

mywibox[s].widgets = {
  ...,
  nowplaying.widget,
  ...
}