chli

name	chli
description	Swiss federal open data CLI — parliament, law, courts, gazette, datasets from one binary
metadata	{"openclaw":{"requires":{"bins":["go"]},"homepage":"https://github.com/salam/chli"}}

chli

Swiss federal open data CLI. One binary, five government APIs, consistent interface.

Install

# Homebrew (macOS)
brew install salam/tap/chli

# From source (requires Go 1.25+)
git clone https://github.com/salam/chli.git && cd chli && make build && cp chli /usr/local/bin/

Verify: chli --help

What it does

Wraps five Swiss government data sources into a single CLI:

Command	Source	Protocol	Data
chli parl	parlament.ch (+ ws-old.parlament.ch)	OData v3 + legacy JSON	Members, votes, business, committees, departments
chli fedlex	fedlex.data.admin.ch	SPARQL	Federal law (SR), gazette, treaties
chli entscheid	entscheidsuche.ch	Elasticsearch	Court decisions, all 26 cantons
chli shab	shab.ch	REST	Official Gazette publications
chli opendata	opendata.swiss	CKAN	Public datasets and organizations

Stack

• Language: Go 1.25+
• CLI framework: Cobra (only external dependency)
• Build: make build produces ./chli
• Test: make test (go test ./... -v)
• Lint: make lint (go vet)

Project layout

main.go              Entry point (delegates to cmd/)
cmd/                 CLI commands (Cobra). One file per data source + root.go
  root.go            Base command, global flags, cache management, shell completion
  parl.go            Parliament subcommands
  fedlex.go          Federal law subcommands
  entscheid.go       Court decisions subcommands
  shab.go            Official gazette subcommands
  opendata.go        Open data subcommands
  bookmark.go        Bookmark/watch functionality
  feed.go            RSS/feed mode
api/                 HTTP clients, types, caching
  client.go          Base HTTP client (TLS fingerprint, retry, timeout)
  cache.go           Filesystem cache (~/.cache/chli/, SHA256 keys, per-source TTLs)
  parl.go            Parliament OData client
  parl_agenda.go     parlament.ch SharePoint Search client (future sessions & events)
  parl_departments.go  Legacy ws-old.parlament.ch client (departments only — not exposed via OData)
  fedlex.go          Fedlex SPARQL client
  fedlex_queries.go  Pre-built SPARQL query templates
  entscheid.go       Court decisions Elasticsearch client
  shab.go            SHAB REST client
  opendata.go        CKAN client
  openparl.go        OpenParlData supplementary client
  *_types.go         Data structures per source
  *_test.go          Unit tests
output/              Dual-mode formatting (table when TTY, JSON when piped)
  output.go          Table/JSON/CSV/TSV rendering, TTY detection, paging
config/              JSON config loader (~/.config/chli/config.json)

Conventions

• One dependency. Cobra only. Everything else uses Go stdlib.
• One file per source. Each data source has a matched pair: cmd/<source>.go (CLI) and api/<source>.go (client) + api/<source>_types.go (structs).
• Output goes through output/. Never print directly. Use the output layer for TTY-aware formatting.
• Cache is per-source. Each API client sets its own TTL. Cache keys are SHA256-hashed.
• Global flags (--json, --lang, --no-cache, --refresh, --verbose, --debug, --quiet, --no-color, --columns, -o format) are defined in cmd/root.go.
• Multilingual. Five languages (de/fr/it/en/rm). Language flows through API calls where the source supports it.
• Error handling. Structured errors on stderr (interactive) or JSON (piped). Retry with exponential backoff + jitter on 429/5xx.
• TLS fingerprinting. api/client.go mimics Chrome's TLS over HTTP/1.1 to bypass the WAF on ws.parlament.ch. The legacy ws-old.parlament.ch endpoint (used only for chli parl department) sits behind Akamai and rejects that same Chrome UA over HTTP/1.1 — api/parl_departments.go sends a curl-style User-Agent instead. Do not simplify either.

Adding a new data source

1. Create api/<source>.go with a client struct and methods. Use api/client.go's DoRequest for HTTP. Add api/<source>_types.go for response structs.
2. Create cmd/<source>.go with Cobra subcommands. Register the top-level command in cmd/root.go's init().
3. Add a cache TTL constant in api/cache.go.
4. Route all output through output.PrintTable / output.PrintJSON.
5. Add tests in api/<source>_test.go.

Adding a new subcommand to an existing source

1. Add the Cobra command in cmd/<source>.go.
2. Add any needed API methods in api/<source>.go and types in api/<source>_types.go.
3. Respect --lang, --json, --no-cache, --columns flags.

Key design decisions

• Escape hatches exist. parl query (raw OData) and fedlex sparql (raw SPARQL, supports @filename) let power users bypass the structured CLI.
• TTY detection drives output. Piped output is always JSON by default. Terminal output is always tables. --json forces JSON in terminal.
• Cache is aggressive. Federal law caches 7 days, parliament 1 hour, others 1-24 hours. --no-cache skips reads, --refresh forces fresh fetch.
• Build metadata. Version, commit, and build date are injected via ldflags at build time.
• Legacy endpoint retained for departments. The current OData service covers every ws-old category except federal departments, so chli parl department is the one command that still hits ws-old.parlament.ch. If/when departments appear in OData, remove api/parl_departments.go and switch the subcommand over.
• SharePoint Search for future sessions. The OData Session entity only exposes sessions once the Parlamentsdienste register them (typically a few months ahead). The public agenda page at parlament.ch/en/services/agenda publishes further out (currently through 2027). api/parl_agenda.go drives the same anonymous ProcessQuery CSOM endpoint the page uses: POST /_api/contextinfo for a form digest, then POST the ProcessQuery XML. The payload is sensitive — it must set SafeQueryPropertiesTemplateUrl=querygroup://webroot/Pages/Agenda.aspx?groupname=Default, ListId=263e44d0-b5e1-4c28-bc00-6c894a4c30da, SourceId={d4659255-875e-4444-b356-2ed2ce7e439c}, and reuse the site's query-id 5c701ab9-b60a-4f1a-8a25-78a4d25c798fDefault, or the server rejects with "List does not exist" / "UseRemoteAPIs permission required". The chli parl events command and the chli parl / chli parl session session lists both merge results from this endpoint into OData output so future sessions are surfaced.

Distribution

• Homebrew formula in Formula/chli.rb
• Nix flake in flake.nix
• GoReleaser config in .goreleaser.yml
• GitHub Actions CI in .github/workflows/
• Cross-platform binaries: macOS (Intel + ARM), Linux (amd64 + arm64), Windows