Pushover is a web service to send messages from a computer to an iOS (or Android) device.
Previously I was using Prowl, but Pushover has a richer feature set and looks nicer, which is what gave me the idea to call my script posh.
posh is a simple shell script that I wrote which uses the Pushover REST API to easily send messages to myself from other shell scripts.
For example, if I have a cron or launchd job that runs every night or every week, and I want to know that it was successful, I can just add this to the bottom of the script before the exit:
po.sh "$0 exited successfully"
That way I don’t need to worry about getting all of the Pushover API details right every time I want to write a shell script which sends a message using Pushover.
Also, po.sh will automatically add the hostname and time to the end of the message, so I’ll never have to wonder “Which computer sent me this message?”
In order to use this script, you will need to:
- Sign up for a free account at https://pushover.net/login .
- Fill out the form at https://pushover.net/apps/build to register this script and get your personalized Pushover “Token”.
You will see a form like this:
You might be able to use po.sh for the "Name" in the first field, but I would not be surprised to learn that Pushover requires every application to have a unique name. If so just call it something else.
Make sure that you choose "Script" from the “Type” drop down (item #2 in the image). Fill in whatever you want for #3 and #4. You will then need to choose an image to use as an icon, and then check the box to agree to the TOS.
Launch the Pushover app on your iPad or iPhone/iPod touch (or Android device) and find the User Key which is specific to that device. (It is not the same thing as your user name on the Pushover website!)
Then you need to add your Token and User Key somewhere that po.sh can find it. There are four options:
- Put the two lines inside the
po.shfile itself. This is the easiest method, assuming that you are not going to post your version ofpo.shto Github or anywhere that someone might see it, because then they could send you messages and use your API quota. - Put the two lines inside ~/.zshenv because
po.shis a zsh script and therefore it will read ~/.zshenv before it runs. - Put the two lines inside a plain text file at
"$HOME/Dropbox/etc/posh.txt" - Redefine
POSH_FILE=inpo.shto point to a file other than"$HOME/Dropbox/etc/posh.txt"and put the two lines inside a plain text file there.
Which two lines? These two:
PUSHOVER_TOKEN='tttttttttttttt'
PUSHOVER_USER_KEY='uuuuuuuuuuuu'
Obviously you want to change tttttttttttttt to the token you received when you created the “application" on Pushover’s website, and change uuuuuuuuuuuu to whatever your User Key actually is, as shown in the settings of the Pushover app on your iOS or Android device. Just make sure that it starts and ends with a straight ' and that there are no spaces on either side of the = and that PUSHOVER_TOKEN and PUSHOVER_USER_KEY are both uppercase with _ in the right places, as shown.
(Sorry to be so specific and step-by-step, but I’m trying to imagine someone who is new at this and isn’t sure what to do. On the other hand, most people reading code on Github probably know how to do this.)