autobahn-cli — Usage

Use-case-driven examples for the autobahn CLI, a client for the open Autobahn App API (verkehr.autobahn.de): live roadworks, traffic warnings, closures, lorry parking, webcams and electric charging stations along the German motorway network. The CLI is read-only and needs no API key. Every command prints pretty JSON to stdout.

Install

npm i -g @maschinenlesbar.org/autobahn-cli

This installs the autobahn bin. To run without a global install, use node dist/src/cli/index.js (after npm run build) in place of autobahn in any example below.

Use cases

1. Discover which motorways are covered

Find the valid <roadId> values (e.g. A1, A8, A99) you can pass to every other command.

autobahn roads

Returns a JSON array of motorway ids. Pipe through jq to get a flat, greppable list:

autobahn roads | jq -r '.[]'

2. See current roadworks on the A1

Check what construction sites are active before a trip down the A1.

autobahn roadworks list A1

Each item includes an identifier you can feed to roadworks get. Pull just the human-readable titles:

autobahn roadworks list A1 | jq -r '.[].title'

3. List open closures on a motorway

Closures are full or partial blockings — useful for spotting a route that is shut entirely.

autobahn closures list A3

A list that matches nothing is not an error: it prints an empty result and exits 0.

4. Read the full detail of one item by its identifier

The list output is a summary; get fetches the complete record for a single item, addressed by the identifier field from a matching list.

# 1) grab an identifier from the list
autobahn roadworks list A1 | jq -r '.[0].identifier'

# 2) fetch its full detail (paste the identifier from step 1)
autobahn roadworks get <identifier>

get with an unknown id (or a 404 from the API) exits 4 (not found).

5. Find webcams along the A99 (Munich ring)

Pull live camera locations so you can eyeball traffic conditions.

autobahn webcams list A99

Extract the linkable camera URLs with jq:

autobahn webcams list A99 | jq -r '.[].linkurl'

6. Locate lorry parking areas on the A8

Plan a rest stop by listing the parking areas (and their occupancy data) along a route.

autobahn parking list A8

7. Find EV charging stations along a road

List electric charging stations on the A9 to plan where to recharge.

autobahn charging list A9

Then drill into one station’s details:

autobahn charging get <identifier>

8. Check traffic warnings, compactly, for scripting

--compact prints single-line JSON — handy when piping into another tool or logging. Note it is a global option and goes before the command.

autobahn --compact warnings list A2

9. Count how many roadworks are active on a motorway

Combine list with jq for a quick metric.

autobahn roadworks list A7 | jq 'length'

10. Run against a different host or with a longer timeout

Point the client at an alternate base URL, or relax the per-request timeout for slow networks. These are global options, placed before the command.

autobahn --timeout 60000 --user-agent "trip-planner/1.0" warnings list A1
autobahn --base-url https://verkehr.autobahn.de roads

Global options

Global options may be given before or after the command — both autobahn --compact roads and autobahn roads --compact work.

Commands: roads, and the six service groups roadworks, webcams, parking, warnings, closures, charging — each with list <roadId> and get <identifier> subcommands.

Exit codes: 0 success, 4 not found (get matched nothing / API 404), 1 any other API, network, parse, or usage error.