More Than Nothing

I just started a new job, and as part of the induction we had to do a lot of complete builds, both for an application server and for a pretty substantial database. Needless to say, these took quite a long time.

I found myself wishing there was a way for the computer to notify me that it was done, so I could go elsewhere and do something interesting while it plodded along.

To this end, I wrote the following little python script, which uses notifo to send you a push message on your iPhone when a command has finished executing.

#!/usr/bin/env python

from notifo import Notifo
import os, sys

api_user = [API_USER]
api_key = [API_KEY]
notifo = Notifo(api_user, api_key)

def print_usage():
    sys.stderr.write('''Usage:
  %(command)s register <username>
or
  %(command)s <username> <command>
''' % { 'command': sys.argv[0] })

def register(username):
    result = notifo.subscribe_user(username)
    sys.stderr.write(result["response_message"] + '\n')

def notify(username):
    result = notifo.send_notification(username, 'Command \'%s\' has completed' % command)
    if result['status'] == 'error':
        sys.stderr.write('cmd-notify error: ' + result["response_message"] + '\n')

if len(sys.argv) == 3 and sys.argv[1] == 'register':
    username = sys.argv[2]
    register(username)
elif len(sys.argv) < 4:
    print_usage()
else:
    username = sys.argv[1]
    command = ' '.join(sys.argv[2:])
    os.system(command)
    notify(username)

First register your account to receive push notifications by running cmdnotify.py register <username>. Once you've accepted messages from the service, simply use cmdnotify.py <username> <command> (e.g. cmdnotify.py ajanuary build_db $DB_NAME). When the command has finished, you'll get a push notification letting you know it's done.