Conky and Lua
From Conky
Conky features built in Lua support since 1.7.1 . Lua is a "lightweight, reflective, imperative and functional programming language, designed as a scripting language with extensible semantics as a primary goal", which makes it ideal for integration into Conky. To get started using Lua in Conky, you'll need a copy of Conky 1.7.1 or newer. Configure Conky with the ``--enable-lua'' option to enable Lua support at compile time.
See the more detailed Lua example the more detailed Lua example, or browse the Lua category for more.
Short Example
Place the following in your conky config:
lua_load <path to the luascript>
TEXT
${lua short}
and place the following in your luascript:
function conky_short()
return "A short lua example"
end
A bit more useful example
Here is a really quick example of using Lua with Conky. This script will colour the top values according to CPU and memory usage.
In your conkyrc, add the following:
lua_load <path to script below>
...
TEXT
${color}Name PID CPU% MEM%
${lua_read_parse top_cpu_colour ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}}
...
${color}Mem usage
${lua_read_parse top_mem_colour ${top_mem name 1} ${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}}
...
Save the following Lua script somewhere to be loaded from the above conkyrc:
-- Conky Lua scripting example
--
do
-- this function changes Conky's top colour based on a threshold
function conky_top_colour(value, default_colour, upper_thresh, lower_thresh)
local r, g, b = default_colour, default_colour, default_colour
local colour = 0
-- in my case, there are 4 CPUs so a typical high value starts at around ~20%, and 25% is one thread/process maxed out
local thresh_diff = upper_thresh - lower_thresh
if (value - lower_thresh) > 0 then
if value > upper_thresh then value = upper_thresh end
-- add some redness, depending on the 'strength'
r = math.ceil(default_colour + ((value - lower_thresh) / thresh_diff) * (0xff - default_colour))
b = math.floor(default_colour - ((value - lower_thresh) / thresh_diff) * default_colour)
g = b
end
colour = (r * 0x10000) + (g * 0x100) + b -- no bit shifting operator in Lua afaik
return string.format("${color #%06x}", colour%0xffffff)
end
-- parses the output from top and calls the colour function
function conky_top_cpu_colour(arg)
-- input is ' ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}'
local cpu = tonumber(string.match(arg, '(%d+%.%d+)'))
-- tweak the last 3 parameters to your liking
-- my machine has 4 CPUs, so an upper thresh of 25% is appropriate
return conky_top_colour(cpu, 0xd3, 25, 15) .. arg
end
function conky_top_mem_colour(arg)
-- input is '${top_mem name 1} ${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}'
local mem = tonumber(string.match(arg, '%d+%.%d+%s+(%d+%.%d+)'))
-- tweak the last 3 parameters to your liking
-- my machine has 8GiB of ram, so an upper thresh of 15% is appropriate
return conky_top_colour(mem, 0xd3, 15, 5) .. arg
end
end
