GroupCurses

I've recently started using GroupMe a lot more to keep in contact with a few people. Unfortunately, the existing commandline applications to interact with their API either aren't my style or are written in a langauge I'd have a hard time modifying. So instead, I built GroupCurses on top of urwid and requests in Python3 in the hope of first getting a stable connection to GroupMe and then branching out to try and interface with other chap APIs. That way I don't have to pick which applicaiton to use, I can chat with anyone.

Installation

Should be as easy as a pip install but if that doesn't work, I'm building against urwid v1.3.1 and requests v2.10.0 so you'll need access to those and have them running in Python 3.5. This really is my first major Python project so I haven't done a lot of testing for what versions of Python it works with.

Configuration

You can configure the client by creating a YAML file in one of the following locations. They are listed in order of preference and the first valid file located is used. The listed locations are searched for a file named .groupcursesrc:

• Current directory ./
• XDG default config home ~/.config/groupcurses
• User home directory ~/
• Global configuration directory /etc/groupcurses
• Environment specified directory $GROUPCURSES_CONF

Currently, the application only supports integration with GroupMe but additional backends are possible. The example below is the minimum required configuration file to use the GroupMe integration.

---
general:
    interfaces:
        - groupme

groupme:
    api_key: <GroupMe developer API key>

Use

The biggest thing is the vim like interface. Currently there are 3 modes for the application which can be accessed using keybindings. The application starts in Normal mode and can be returned there at any time by pressing ESC.

When in normal mode you can scroll through your available groups and direct messages in the sidebar. Selecting a conversation will load the last 20 or so messages and display them in the message area.

New messages can be composed by hitting i to enter Compose mode which shifts focus to the textbox at the bottom of the application. Messages are sent when you hit enter.