xbar-datafast

Your site's traffic in the macOS menu bar, from DataFast: who is on the site right now, and how today is going.

🚀 1·8

One person online now, eight visitors today. Click it for the rest:

just-launch.dev — 1 online now, 8 visitors today
DataFast dashboard
Open just-launch.dev
──────────────────────────────────────────────
Today, Sep 21
Visitors    8   ▲ +3 vs yesterday at this hour (5)
Pageviews   24  (3.0 per visitor)
Sessions    18  78% bounce
Revenue     $0  0 payments
By hour     ········█▆█▃
            00h to 11h
──────────────────────────────────────────────
Sources today
Direct/None                   7
X                             1
LinkedIn                      1
Pages today
/                             7
/excuses                      3
Goals today
signup_started                2
──────────────────────────────────────────────
Yesterday: 7 visitors · Last 7 days: 81 visitors, 338 pageviews
Updated 11:18

The comparison is against yesterday at the same hour, not yesterday's total. At 10am, knowing you are ahead of where you were at 10am yesterday tells you something; yesterday's final number does not.

Install

1. Get xbar (brew install --cask xbar).

2. Drop datafast.1m.py into ~/Library/Application Support/xbar/plugins/ and make it executable:

   curl -o ~/Library/Application\ Support/xbar/plugins/datafast.1m.py \
     https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nemone81/xbar-datafast/main/datafast.1m.py
   chmod +x ~/Library/Application\ Support/xbar/plugins/datafast.1m.py

3. In DataFast, open Website settings → Developer and create a website API key (df_…). It is scoped to that one site, which is all this plugin needs.

4. In xbar, open Preferences → Plugin settings and paste the key into VAR_API_KEY.

That is the whole setup. The site name, its timezone and the dashboard link are read from DataFast, because the key already knows which website it belongs to.

Python 3 is the only dependency, and macOS ships with it.

Settings

Variable	Default	What it does
VAR_API_KEY	—	The DataFast website API key (df_…).
VAR_KEYCHAIN_ACCOUNT	—	Read the key from the keychain instead (see below).
VAR_SITE_NAME	the site's domain	Name shown in the menu.
VAR_TIMEZONE	the website's timezone	Which day counts as "today".
VAR_TOP_N	5	How many sources, pages and goals to list.

Keeping the key out of a plain file

xbar stores plugin variables in a datafast.1m.py.vars.json file sitting next to the plugin, in the clear. If you would rather not leave an API key there, put it in the macOS keychain and point the plugin at it:

# asks for the key twice, and never puts it in your shell history
security add-generic-password -U -A -s xbar-datafast -a mysite -w

Then set VAR_KEYCHAIN_ACCOUNT to mysite and leave VAR_API_KEY empty. With no account set, the plugin looks for one named after the plugin file (datafast).

More than one site

Copy the plugin under another name — blog.1m.py, shop.1m.py — and each copy gets its own settings in xbar, and its own keychain account by default. The refresh rate is the middle part of the file name: datafast.30s.py refreshes every 30 seconds.

Settings can also live in ~/.config/xbar-datafast/<plugin name>.json (label, site_url, dashboard_url, timezone, top_n, keychain_account), which is handy when you install the plugin from a dotfiles repo.

How it works

Everything comes from the DataFast API: analytics/realtime for who is on the site now, analytics/overview and analytics/timeseries for today, plus referrers, pages and goals for the lists.

Responses are cached on disk in ~/Library/Caches/xbar-datafast. Every minute only the live count and today's totals go over the network; the lists and the comparisons refresh every ten minutes. If the network or the API fails, the title becomes 🚀 ⚠️ with the error in the dropdown — the menu bar never goes blank.

One quirk worth knowing: /analytics/pages treats endAt as exclusive, unlike overview and referrers, so the plugin asks it for tomorrow's date to get today.

License

MIT © Fabio Crestoni