100% agree this would be a nice feature. Perhaps a config like this?

providers:
  - type: 'shell'
    alias: 'music'
    command: 'node music_player_backend.js'
    update_method:
      continuous: false
      interval: 5000
template: |
  {{ music.output }}
  {{ music.prevOutputs }}

An idea is to expose a shell.exec({ commandOverride?: string }) function to explicitly run it and even override the command so that different flags could be passed.

Edit (Dec. 2024): the suggested config snippet above was for Zebar v2, which has since been overhauled to a new format/architecture.

100% agree this would be a nice feature. Perhaps a config like this?

providers:
  - type: 'shell'
    alias: 'music'
    command: 'node music_player_backend.js'
    update_method:
      continuous: false
      interval: 5000
template: |
  {{ music.output }}
  {{ music.prevOutputs }}

An idea is to expose a shell.exec({ commandOverride?: string }) function to explicitly run it and even override the command so that different flags could be passed.

That sounds perfect to me!

Parsing a text file would be handy. Then users could script in whatever language they want and write to a file. Personally I'd want to exec PowerShell, but I'm perfectly happy writing to a file and having zebar read it.

I was really missing the feature, so I made the following workaround for myself that works.
Maybe if someone is searching for something similar, this could help.

It's a simple GET request on an webserver and within the webserver i'm calling an CLI script.

function App() {
 ......
 const [commandOutput, setCommandOutput] = useState('Timer isn\'t set.');

 useEffect(() => {
   .....

   const interval = setInterval(fetchCommandOutput, 20000); // Refresh every 2 minutes
   return () => clearInterval(interval);
 }, []);

 const fetchCommandOutput = async () => {
   try {
     const response = await fetch('http://localhost:9999/time-tracking');
     const text = await response.text()

     setCommandOutput(text);
   } catch (error) {
     setCommandOutput('Unable to fetch timer.')
   }
 }

<div className="right">
  <div className="time-tracking">
    {commandOutput === 'off' ? (
      <>
        <i className="nf nf-md-timer_off" /> No active timer
      </>
    ) : (
      <>
        <i className="nf nf-md-timer_check" /> {commandOutput}
      </>
    )}
  </div>

  .....

Has the new version of GlazeWM and ZeBar resolved the issue of reading local files? Which version is it?