avahi-json

@readwithai - X - blog - machine-aided reading - 📖⚡️🖋️

Query the local network for devices and services using MDNS bia avahi (like avahi-browser -ar) but output results in easy-to-use JSON.

Motivation

I have an Android phone on my home network. I also use KDE connect on the phone. I occassionally want to connect to this phone via ADB over a TCP connection, but the IP address is not fixed.

I could use KDE connect to find the device since KDE connect advertises itself using an MDNS services (i.e. avahi). This would be all well and good - but the avahi command-line tool neither allows me to directly query for my phone, nor does it produce machine-readable output.

Therefore I am writing something which queries for services on the network using avahi and outputs theresult in beautiful JSON. I am slightly surprised that no one has done this before.

Installation

You must first install the python3-avahi bindings. These are handled by apt on Ubuntu and can be installed with sudo apt install python3-avahi.

You can then install avahi-json itself using pipx with the following command (--system-site-packages is needed for avahi and dbus):

pipx install --system-site-packages avahi-json

You need to have avahi, Linux's mdns daemon, installed to use this. But this tends to be installed by default.

Usage

Run avahi-json: this will give you services on the network with a separate JSON entry on each line.

About me

I am @readwithai. I create tools for reading, research and agency sometimes using the markdown editor Obsidian.

I also create a stream of tools that are related to carrying out my work.

I write about lots of things - including tools like this - on X. My blog is more about reading and research and agency.