BitcoinPrice (Gnome extension)

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Revision as of 17:52, 18 November 2013 by Nad (talk | contribs) (my first Gnome extension!)
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This is my first Gnome extension which collects the current Mt Gox Bitcoin price and displays it next to the clock in the main Gnome panel. The code is available in our extensions repository here.

First the code needs to be placed into your extensions directory in the path ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/, and the extension directory should be renamed from BitcoinPrice to BitcoinPrice@organicdesign.co.nz. This is probably the wrong way to go about installing it, but I'm a total noob at Gnome extensions, so haven't figured out the right ways of doing things yet!

Also I didn't know how to make it check the Mt Gox API URL on a regular interval, so currently you have to call a Python one-liner on a cron job using something like the command below in /etc/crpntab. The extension expects the price to be in a file called .btcprice.txt in your home directory.

*/5 * * * * nad /home/nad/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/BitcoinPrice@organicdesign.co.nz/mtgox-price.py > /home/nad/.btcprice.txt