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:


<span style="color:#323232;">lemmyverse pattern
</span>

Find communities about motorcycles:


<span style="color:#323232;">$ lemmyverse motorcycle
</span><span style="color:#323232;">120024@lemmy.world      All Things motorcycles
</span><span style="color:#323232;">20hirnzelle@feddit.ch   All Things motorcycles
</span><span style="color:#323232;">7810322@lemmy.world     All Things motorcycles
</span><span style="color:#323232;">bmwmotorrad@lemmy.world Community for BMW motorcycles. A place to share
</span><span style="color:#323232;">bootstrappable@slrpnk.net       A community to discuss all things BMW cars & motorcycles.nFeel free to show off your new vehicle/parts
</span><span style="color:#323232;">buell@lemmy.world       A discussion area for Buell motorcycles.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">motorcycle_logistics@lemmy.world        A community for pictures and videos of people using motorcycles to transport things in a creative manner.nnThis includes
</span><span style="color:#323232;">motorcycles@feddit.de   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:


<span style="color:#323232;">$ lemmyverse '(plan9)|(Plan 9)'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">plan9@lemmy.sdf.org     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:


<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>
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