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 apps/cli/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

The listing holds active and planned works: a planned item carries "future": true (on the A1 in October 2026, 96 of 239). Each item includes an identifier you can feed to roadworks get. Pull just the titles of the active ones:

autobahn roadworks list A1 | jq -r '.[] | select(.future | not) | .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

Planned closures are listed too ("future": true), so keep only the open ones:

autobahn closures list A3 | jq '[.[] | select(.future | not)]'

A list that matches nothing is not an error: it prints an empty result and exits 0. A road id the API does not know (a typo, or a3 for A3 — ids are case-sensitive) exits 4 with Unknown road id … instead, so an empty result always means a real road with nothing listed.

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). Use the service the identifier was listed under: the API resolves an identifier whatever the service, so roadworks get on a parking id prints the parking area (exit 0, display_type PARKING).

5. Find webcams along the A99 (Munich ring)

Pull live camera locations so you can eyeball traffic conditions.

autobahn webcams list A99

Upstream data gap. The webcam service currently returns [] on every road checked (A1, A3, A7, A8, A99 in September 2026). That is the upstream data, not a CLI error: the commands work, there is just nothing listed.

Once the service lists webcams again, extract the linkable camera URLs with jq (until then this prints nothing):

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

6. Locate lorry parking areas on the A8

Plan a rest stop by listing the parking areas along a route. Each item gives the number of spaces (PKW Stellplätze: N, LKW Stellplätze: N in description), not live occupancy.

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. It is a global option and works before or after 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. Drop the planned items ("future": true) first, or the count includes works that have not started:

autobahn roadworks list A7 | jq '[.[] | select(.future | not)] | 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; they work before or after 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.

A base URL on plain http: to a host other than loopback (localhost, 127.0.0.0/8, ::1) works, but the CLI writes one warning record to stderr before the first request, e.g. … WARN [autobahn.http] requests to mirror.example are sent unencrypted (http:, not https:), or … WARN [autobahn.http] the base URL's credentials are sent unencrypted to mirror.example (http:, not https:) when it carries a user:password@ (never printed). stdout and the exit code are unchanged.

Commands: roads, and the six service groups roadworks, webcams, parking, warnings, closures, charging — each with list <roadId> and get <identifier> subcommands. autobahn help <command path> (for example autobahn help roadworks list) prints the help of any command, like --help after it.

Exit codes: 0 success (also help, including autobahn with no arguments), 4 not found (get matched nothing or answered 404 / unknown road id in list), 2 usage error (a command, option or argument rejected before any request, or a command group without a subcommand), 1 any other API, network or parse error — including a 404 from roads or a list, which means a wrong --base-url.