Send a Matrix message using the CLI or an HTTP PUT/POST request. It's intended to support easy scripting to send yourself or a team notifications over Matrix.
This runs a Matrix bot account that pings you on Matrix when it's called. It can be run standalone, or it can run as a daemon and listen for HTTP requests.
That's it.
If you want to use my default instance at pokem.dev, you don't need to install anything.
It is built using headjack, a Matrix bot framework in Rust.
If this seems familiar, that's because it's a clone of the core feature of ntfy.sh, but only using Matrix. I'd encourage you to check out that project to see if it better suits your needs.
There is a public Matrix room available at #pokem:jackson.dev
I run an endpoint and associated bot account accessible at pokem.dev, with the bot running on my homeserver on jackson.dev.
pokem.dev
is usually running the git main branch, instead of the latest release.
pokem
will default to that instance if you have not configured the server settings.
You can run your own instance (using pokem --daemon
), but here I'll describe using pokem.dev
curl --fail -d "Backup successful 😀" pokem.dev/<room id>
. Or use pokem <room id> <message>
.curl
or pokem
commands will block until the message is sent, and will return an error if there is a problem.pokem
, like ntfy
, listens to HTTP PUT/POST requests, so it's easy to send a message.
If you'd like more examples of how to send messages, just look at the ntfy docs and use the Matrix Room ID instead of the ntfy "topic".
If you use the pokem
CLI, you can set a default room in the config file, and then you don't need to specify it in commands.
pokem Backup Successful 😀
will be all you need.
The daemon also provides a webpage that will send messages for you, e.g. pokem.dev. For ease of use, you can use URLs with the Room ID so that you can generate easy links.
Try it out! Send a message to https://pokem.dev/pokem-example:jackson.dev and you can see it in #pokem-example:jackson.dev.
You can also use the unique room id: https://pokem.dev/!JYrjsPjErpFSDdpwpI:jackson.dev, or a URI-encoded room-alias (with the Matrix standard '#') https://pokem.dev/%23pokem-example:jackson.dev. '#' is a special URL character, you need to URI Encode it (as "%23") or just remove it from your request, as we will support "pokem-example:jackson.dev" as a room name.
The pokem
tool comes with several convenience features to help with sending messages.
You can configure a default room, and setup shorthand room names, to make things easier to use.
Here are some example calls:
# These three commands are all equivalent
pokem !RoomID:jackson.dev Backup failed!
pokem --room !RoomID:jackson.dev Backup failed!
curl --fail -d "Backup failed!" pokem.dev/!RoomID:jackson.dev
pokem Backup failed! # Will send to your configured default room
pokem error Backup failed! # Will send to your configured room named "error"
pokem --room error Backup failed! # Same as above
# It also accepts stdin as the room message
echo "Backup failed!" | pokem error # Sends to the room named "error"
cat README.md | pokem # Send the contents of a file to the default room
See the Setup section for config options.
If you don't want to use @pokem:jackson.dev, there are 2 ways to still use Pok'em.
You can either:
pokem --daemon
, and access just as described above.Running Pok'em as a daemon has several advantages, but it is perfectly usable to just use local login.
pokem
locally, which is especially useful to be pinged from a CI job.The Pok'em daemon is available as a Docker image on Docker Hub. Here's a Docker Compose example:
services:
pokem:
image: arcuru/pokem:main # Set to your desired version
volumes:
# Mount your config file to /config.yaml
- ./config.yaml:/config.yaml
# Recommended: Persist the logged in session
# You will need to set the state directory to this location in the config file
# e.g.
# matrix:
# state_dir: /state
- pokem-state:/state
network_mode: host
volumes:
# Persists the logged in session
pokem-state:
pokem
is only packaged on crates.io, so installing it needs to be done via cargo install pokem
or from git.
For Nix users, this repo contains a Nix flake. See the setup section for details on configuring.
Using your own bot account will require setup, otherwise there is no setup required.
pokem
the CLI tool runs down this list until it finds something to do:
pokem --daemon
runs it as a daemon, listening for HTTP messages.pokem.dev
instance.pokem
with a server configured will send a PUT request to the server.Here is the config file skeleton.
It can be placed in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pokem/config.yaml or passed via pokem --config ~/path/to/config.yaml
.
# Optional, for creating room shorthands
# These can be used in place of the raw room IDs
# e.g. `pokem error The backup failed!` will send "The backup failed!" to the room named "error"
rooms:
# Default is a special value, and will be used if no room is specified
# e.g. `pokem The backup failed!` will send to the default room
default: "!RoomID:jackson.dev"
error: "!ErrorRoom:jackson.dev"
fullteam: "!RoomWithFullTeam:jackson.dev"
discord: "!RoomBridgedToDiscord:jackson.dev"
# Optional, define the server to send messages to
# If configured, `pokem` will first try to query this server to send the message
# Will use pokem.dev by default
server:
url: https://pokem.dev
# Optional, customize the port if necessary
port: 80
# Optional, if you want to login to your own Matrix account
# You will need to create the bot account manually
matrix:
homeserver_url: https://matrix.jackson.dev
username: "pokem"
# Optional, will ask on first run
#password: ""
# Optional, but necessary for use
#allow_list: ".*"
# Optional, the max size of the room to join
#room_size_limit: 5
# Optional, customize the state directory for the Matrix login data
# Defaults to $XDG_STATE_HOME/pokem
#state_dir:
# Optional, customize the default format used for messages
# Defaults to markdown, but can also be set to plain
#format: markdown
# Optional, to define the bindings when running as a service
daemon:
addr: "0.0.0.0"
port: 80
You can configure an Authentication token from the Matrix side, so that poking a Matrix room would require knowing the token.
Sending !pokem set auth pokempassword
to the Matrix bot will set the token to "pokempassword".
Once the token is set, the room will not be pinged unless the token is given in the HTTP headers, for example:
curl --fail pokem.dev/roomid -d "poke the room" -H "Authentication: pokempassword"
pokem --auth pokempassword --room roomid poke the room
If the token matches the message will be sent to the room, otherwise the request will fail.
The token can be seen by anyone in the room by sending !pokem info
, and it can be removed with !pokem set auth off
.
Here are some non-standard things you could do with this:
pokem
your login info.pokem <room> I'm running late
pokem
only does text pings on Matrix.pokem
is limited to only Matrix and things bridged to Matrix.Development is being done using a Nix flake. The easiest way to install pokem is to use nix flakes.
❯ nix run github:arcuru/pokem
The flake contains an overlay to make it easier to import into your own flake config. To use, add it to your inputs:
inputs.pokem.url = "github:arcuru/pokem";
And then add the overlay inputs.pokem.overlays.default
to your pkgs.
The flake also contains a home-manager module for installing the daemon as a service.
Import the module into your home-manager config and you can configure pokem
all from within nix:
{inputs, ... }: {
imports = [ inputs.pokem.homeManagerModules.default ];
services.pokem = {
enable = true;
settings = {
homeserver_url = "https://matrix.jackson.dev";
username = "pokem";
password = "hunter2";
allow_list = "@me:matrix.org|@myfriend:matrix.org";
};
};
}