aw-watcher-ask

An ActivityWatch watcher to pose questions to the user and record her answers.

This watcher uses Zenity to present dialog boxes to the user, and stores her answers in a locally running instance of ActivityWatch. This can be useful to poll all sorts of information on a periodical or random basis. The inspiration comes from the experience sampling method (ESM) used in psychological studies, as well as from the quantified self movement.

Table of Contents

• aw-watcher-ask
  • Table of Contents
  • Install
    • Using pip/pipx
    • From source
  • Usage
    • CLI
    • Accessing the data
  • Security
  • Limitations and Roadmap
  • Maintainers
  • Contributing
  • License

Install

Using pip/pipx

Create a virtual environment, activate it and run:

$ python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/bcbernardo/aw-watcher-ask.git
Collecting git+https://github.com/bcbernardo/aw-watcher-ask.git
... ...
Installing collected packages: aw-watcher-ask
Successfully installed aw-watcher-ask-0.1.0

Alternatively, you may use pipx to abstract away the creation of the virtual environment, and make sure the package is globally available:

$ pipx install git+https://github.com/bcbernardo/aw-watcher-ask.git
  installed package aw-watcher-ask 0.1.0, Python 3.9.6
  These apps are now globally available
    - aw-watcher-ask
done! ✨ 🌟 ✨

From source

To install the watcher, clone the repository to your local filesystem and install it with poetry:

$ git clone https://github.com/bcbernardo/aw-watcher-ask.git
$ cd aw-watcher-ask
$ poetry install
... ...
Installing the current project: aw-watcher-ask (0.1.0)
$ poetry shell  # alternatively, add `poetry run` before every command in the examples below

Usage

Before you start using aw-watcher-ask, make sure you have ActivityWatch installed and running.

CLI

The following command will show the dialog box below each hour at 00 minutes and 00 seconds, wait up to 120 seconds for the user's response, and save it to a bucket in the local ActivityWatcher instance.

$ aw-watcher-ask run --question-id "happiness.level" --question-type="question" --title="My happiness level" --text="Are you feeling happy right now?" --timeout=120 --schedule "0 */1 * * * 0"
... ...

Check aw-watcher-ask run --help to see all required and optional control parameters.

The --question-id is used to identify this particular question in the ActivityWatcher a aw-watcher-ask bucket, and is therefore mandatory.

The question-type parameters is also required and should be one of Zenity's supported dialog types (complex types such as forms, file-selection and list have not been implemented yet). All options supported by these dialog types are accepted by aw-watcher-ask run as extra parameters, and passed unaltered to Zenity under the hood.

Accessing the data

All data gathered is stored under aw-watcher-ask_localhost.localdomain bucket (or test-aw-watcher-ask_localhost.localdomain, when running with the --testing flag) in the local ActivityWatch endpoint. Check ActivityWatch REST API documentation to learn how to get the stored events programatically, so that you can apply some custom analysis.

Security

As other ActivityWatcher watchers, aw-watcher-ask communicates solely with the locally running AW server instance. All data collected is stored in your machine.

Limitations and Roadmap

aw-watcher-ask is in a very early development stage. Expect bugs and strange behaviors when using it.

This package uses zenity utility, which must be installed in the system and globally accessible through the command line. Zenity comes pre-installed with most Linux installations, and can be installed from all major package repositories (apt, dnf, pacman, brew etc.).

Porting Zenity to Windows is not trivial. If you use Windows, you may give @ncruces' Go port a shot, as it is supposed to be cross-platform. Instructions to install on Windows can be found here

aw-watcher-ask does not currently have a way of storing the questions made, and scheduling them every time the system restarts. We want to implement this eventually, but for now you should wrap all questions you want to schedule in a (shell) script and configure your system to execute it at every startup.

Maintainers

• Bernardo Chrispim Baron (@bcbernardo)

Contributing

PRs accepted. Please open an issue if you have an idea for enhancement or have spotted a bug.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2021 Bernardo Chrispim Baron

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.