Architecture¶
Here we hope to clarify the architecture of ActivityWatch for you. Please file an issue or pull request if you think something is missing.
Dependency graph¶
The below is a graph of the fundamental dependencies between projects, these do not reflect the folder structure.
![digraph {
//activitywatch [shape=box, label="activitywatch"];
//"aw-server" [shape=box, style=filled, fillcolor="0.4+0.5+1"]
//"aw-client" [shape=box, style=filled, fillcolor="0.2+1+1"]
activitywatch -> "aw-server" -> {"aw-webui" "aw-core"};
activitywatch -> "aw-qt";
activitywatch -> "aw-watcher-afk" -> {"aw-client" "aw-core"};
activitywatch -> "aw-watcher-window" -> {"aw-client" "aw-core"};
"aw-client" -> "aw-core";
"aw-server" -> "aw-analysis";
"aw-analysis" -> "aw-core";
subgraph {
rank = same; "aw-watcher-afk"; "aw-watcher-window";
}
//subgraph {
// rank = same; "aw-core"; "aw-client";
//}
/*
* Legend, causes sigsegv...
* http://stackoverflow.com/a/4752766/965332
*/
/*
{ rank = sink;
Legend [shape=none, margin=0, label=<
<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLBORDER="1" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="4">
<TR>
<TD COLSPAN="2"><B>Legend</B></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Foo</TD>
<TD><FONT COLOR="red">Foo</FONT></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Bar</TD>
<TD BGCOLOR="RED"></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Baz</TD>
<TD BGCOLOR="BLUE"></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Test</TD>
<TD>HELLO</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Test</TD>
<TD CELLPADDING="4">
<TABLE BORDER="1" CELLBORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0">
<TR>
<TD BGCOLOR="Yellow"></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
>];
}
*/
}](_images/graphviz-6ede14dbb16b3cb7136adb467964f8815b5ee43e.png)
Server¶
Known as aw-server, it handles storage and retrieval of all activities/entries in buckets. Usually there exists one bucket per watcher.
The server also hosts the Web UI (aw-webui) which does all communication with the server using the REST API.
Clients (watchers, importers, and observers)¶
Since aw-server doesn’t do any data collection on it’s own, we need watchers that observe the world and sent the data off to aw-server for storage.
These utilize the aw-client library for making requests to the aw-server.
For a list of watchers, see Watchers. For a list of importers see Importers.
Libraries¶
Some of the logic of ActivityWatch is shared across the server and clients, for these cases we moved some logic into separate libraries.
aw-core¶
The aw-core library contains many of the essential parts of ActivityWatch, notably:
- The Data model
- The datastore layer
- Event transformation and queries
- Utilities (configuration, logging, decorators)
aw-client¶
Writing these clients is something we’ve tried to make as easy as possible by creating client libraries with a clear API. A client could both be a watcher which sends data as well as a visualizer which fetches and presents data from the aw-server.
Currently the primary client library is written in Python (known simply as aw-client) but a client library written in JavaScript is on the way and is expected to have the same level of support in the future.
- aw-client (Python)
- aw-client-js (TypeScript/JavaScript, beta)
- aw-client-rust (Rust, work in progress)
aw-analysis¶
There are also plans to create a library called aw-analysis to aid in different types of analysis and transformation one might want to make using ActivityWatch data.