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chli

A unified command-line interface for Swiss federal open data. Access parliament records, federal law, court decisions, the official gazette, public datasets, the IP register, the commercial register, federal linked-data, and the geoportal — all from a single binary.

chli parl person --name "Sommaruga"
chli fedlex sr 101
chli entscheid search "Mietrecht"
chli shab search "Konkurs" --rubric KK
chli opendata search "Verkehr"
chli swissreg trademark '"Ovomaltine"'
chli zefix search "Migros" --canton ZH
chli geo search "Bundesplatz 3, Bern"
chli grundbuch parcel --address "Bundesplatz 3, Bern"
chli grundbuch cantons

Why chli?

Switzerland publishes a wealth of government data through various APIs — OData, SPARQL, Elasticsearch, CKAN, and REST. Each has its own query language, pagination, and authentication quirks. chli wraps them all into a consistent CLI with caching, multilingual support, and smart output formatting.

Install

From source

git clone https://github.com/salam/meteoswisscli.git
cd meteoswisscli
make build
./chli --help

Requires Go 1.25+.

Cross-platform builds

make all
# Produces binaries in dist/ for:
#   darwin-amd64, darwin-arm64
#   linux-amd64, linux-arm64
#   windows-amd64

Data Sources

Command Source API Description
chli parl parlament.ch OData v3 (+ legacy JSON for departments) Members, votes, business items, committees, federal departments
chli fedlex fedlex.data.admin.ch SPARQL Federal law (SR), Federal Gazette, treaties, consultations
chli shab shab.ch REST Official Gazette publications
chli opendata opendata.swiss CKAN Public datasets and organizations
chli entscheid entscheidsuche.ch Elasticsearch Court decisions across all 26 cantons
chli swissreg swissreg.ch REST (public search backend) Trademarks, patents, designs, and their publications
chli zefix zefix.admin.ch REST (HTTP Basic) Swiss commercial register — search and UID/CHID lookup
chli uid zefix.admin.ch REST (HTTP Basic) UID-centric entry point; shares credentials with zefix
chli lindas lindas.admin.ch SPARQL Federal linked-data hub (IPI, BFS, procurement, energy, …)
chli geo api3.geo.admin.ch REST Address/place search, layer listing, identify-by-coordinate
chli grundbuch federated cadastre + 26 cantonal registers REST + static registry Parcel (EGRID, area, municipality) lookup + per-canton owner-access matrix (portal, auth, cost)

Quick Start

Parliament

# Search for a member of parliament
chli parl person --name "Müller"

# Look up a parliamentary business item
chli parl business 24.3012

# Browse available OData entity sets
chli parl tables

# Run a custom OData query
chli parl query Person --filter "LastName eq 'Berset'" --select "PersonNumber,FirstName,LastName"

# List federal departments (uses legacy ws-old.parlament.ch — not exposed via OData)
chli parl department
chli parl department --historic   # include end-dated historic records

# Show current session (or past + next) + command help
chli parl

# Upcoming parliamentary events from the parlament.ch agenda
chli parl events                  # all upcoming events
chli parl events --sessions       # only upcoming sessions (through 2027)
chli parl events --lang fr        # localized titles and categories

The parl session list and chli parl root both merge in future sessions scheduled on parlament.ch that are not yet published in the OData Session entity (the OData feed usually lags by a few months).

Federal Law

# Look up a law by SR number
chli fedlex sr 210          # ZGB
chli fedlex sr 814.01       # Umweltschutzgesetz

# Search laws by title
chli fedlex search "Datenschutz"

# Federal Gazette entries
chli fedlex bbl --year 2025

# Run raw SPARQL
chli fedlex sparql "SELECT ?s ?p ?o WHERE { ?s ?p ?o } LIMIT 10"
chli fedlex sparql @query.rq   # from file

Court Decisions

# Search across all courts
chli entscheid search "Mietrecht"

# Filter by court and date range
chli entscheid search "Haftung" --court BGer --from 2024-01-01 --to 2024-12-31

# Results include an ID column — pass it straight to get/download
chli entscheid get CH_BGer_001_4A-123-2024_2024-06-15

# List available courts
chli entscheid courts

Official Gazette (SHAB)

# Search publications (table includes a clickable shab.ch link per row)
chli shab search "Konkurs"

# Filter by rubric
chli shab search "AG" --rubric HR,KK

# Full publication detail — company, seat, address, auditor, changes
# (accepts the publication number or the internal UUID)
chli shab publication HR02-1006615899

# Field-level diff between prior and new state (HR mutations)
chli shab publication HR02-1006615899 --diff

# Timeline of prior FOSC entries for the same legal entity
chli shab history HR02-1006615899
chli shab history HR02-1006615899 --depth 5

# List available rubric codes
chli shab rubrics

Swiss IP Register (Swissreg)

# Trademarks, patents, and designs — no authentication required.
chli swissreg trademark '"Ovomaltine"'       # quote for exact phrase
chli swissreg trademark Nestle --status aktiv --class 30 --max 50
chli swissreg trademark Nestle --filed-after 2024-01-01 --office DE
chli swissreg patent Widerstand
chli swissreg design Stuhl
chli swissreg patent-pub "Ottavio Sala"

# Download a trademark image (looks up the hash automatically).
chli swissreg image 570105 --out ovo.png
chli swissreg image 570105 --url          # just print the image URL

# Fetch a single record by internal URN id (discoverable in search results).
chli swissreg detail chmarke 1206422825

Filters: --status aktiv|geloescht, --class 30 (comma-separated for multiple), --filed-after YYYY-MM-DD, --filed-before YYYY-MM-DD, --office CH|DE|AT|....

Pagination beyond --max 64 is not supported: the backend uses an opaque Transit+JSON cursor that chli does not decode. Refine the query instead.

Commercial Register (Zefix) & UID

Zefix and the UID lookup share the same HTTP Basic credentials (register at zefix.admin.ch, see the API section).

# Store credentials once (prompts for user + password, password echo-suppressed)
chli zefix login                       # or: chli uid login — same keystore entry
chli zefix status
chli zefix logout

# Alternatively, export env vars (take precedence over the keystore)
export ZEFIX_USER=... ZEFIX_PASS=...

# Search the commercial register by company name
chli zefix search "Migros" --canton ZH --max 50

# Look up by UID or CHID
chli zefix company CHE-105.817.537
chli uid lookup CHE-105.817.537

# Normalize / pretty-format a UID (no API call)
chli uid format che105817537           # → CHE-105.817.537

LINDAS (linked open data)

# List datasets exposed by LINDAS
chli lindas datasets

# Raw SPARQL — inline or from a file (same pattern as `fedlex sparql`)
chli lindas sparql "SELECT ?s ?p ?o WHERE { ?s ?p ?o } LIMIT 10"
chli lindas sparql @my-query.rq

LINDAS aggregates many admin linked-data graphs into one SPARQL endpoint: IPI trademarks/patents, BFS statistics, public procurement, energy data, and more.

Geoportal (geo.admin.ch)

# Address / place search
chli geo search "Bundesplatz 3, Bern"

# Feature search across a specific layer type
chli geo search "Rütli" --type featuresearch --limit 5

# List available map layers (useful to find layer IDs for `identify`)
chli geo layers

# Identify features at a WGS84 coordinate (lon,lat)
chli geo identify 7.4446,46.9479
chli geo identify 7.4446,46.9479 --layers ch.kantone.cantonal-boundaries

Grundbuch (land register, parcel + owner access)

# Look up a parcel by address — returns EGRID, canton, municipality, parcel #, portal
chli grundbuch parcel --address "Bundesplatz 3, Bern"

# Or by EGRID (federal parcel ID)
chli grundbuch parcel --egrid CH294676423526

# Or by LV95 coordinate
chli grundbuch parcel --coord 2600423,1199521

# Owner data — returns a canton-specific "how-to" block (portal, auth, cost, legal basis).
# Phase 1 never returns owner names directly: Swiss cantons gate owner
# retrieval via SMS / AGOV / SwissID / Terravis / Intercapi / counter visits
# depending on canton, and chli explains the path instead of pretending.
chli grundbuch owner --egrid CH294676423526

# Capability matrix: which cantons expose owner names publicly, which gate
# behind SMS/eID/SwissID, which require paid extracts
chli grundbuch cantons

# Per-canton detail (portal URLs, auth model, cost, Grundbuchamt contact)
chli grundbuch canton ZH
chli grundbuch canton FR

Parcel geometry/EGRID works for all 26 cantons via the federal aggregated cadastre (api3.geo.admin.ch, layer ch.kantone.cadastralwebmap-farbe). Owner access varies wildly — see chli grundbuch cantons for the matrix and chli grundbuch canton XX for one canton's detail.

The CLI never returns a certified extract (beglaubigter Grundbuchauszug); those always require the paid, identity-verified canton flow, which the owner command explains per canton.

Open Data

# Search datasets
chli opendata search "Bevölkerung"

# Filter by organization and format
chli opendata search "Klima" --org meteoschweiz --format CSV

# List organizations
chli opendata orgs

Output

chli adapts its output automatically, with explicit override via -o:

  • Terminal (TTY): Human-readable tables with aligned columns
  • Piped: JSON by default
  • -o <format>: Force json, yaml, csv, tsv, or md (GitHub-flavoured markdown table). --json is a shortcut for -o json.
# Table in terminal
chli parl person --party "SP"

# JSON (same data, scriptable)
chli parl person --party "SP" --json
chli parl person --party "SP" | jq '.[] | .FirstName'

# YAML
chli zefix search "Migros" -o yaml

# Markdown table (paste into docs or GitHub issues)
chli geo layers -o md

# CSV export
chli entscheid search "Mietrecht" -o csv > cases.csv

Global Flags

Flag Description
--json Force JSON output (shortcut for -o json)
-o <fmt> Output format: json, yaml, csv, tsv, md
--no-color Disable colored output
--lang <code> Language: de (default), fr, it, en, rm
--no-cache Skip reading from cache
--refresh Force cache refresh (ignore TTL)

Caching

chli caches API responses to reduce latency and load on public APIs. Cache files are stored at ~/.cache/chli/ with source-specific TTLs:

Source TTL Reason
Federal Law 7 days Law changes infrequently
Parliament 1 hour Data updates weekly
SHAB 1 hour Daily publications
opendata.swiss 24 hours Metadata changes slowly
Court Decisions 24 hours Decisions published periodically
Swissreg 24 hours IP register updates slowly
Zefix / UID 24 hours Commercial register updates slowly
LINDAS 24 hours Aggregated linked-data graphs
Geoportal 7 days Layer metadata and place lookups are stable

Use --no-cache to bypass or --refresh to force a fresh fetch.

Configuration

Optional config file at ~/.config/chli/config.json:

{
  "language": "de",
  "cache_dir": "~/.cache/chli"
}

Languages

All five official and national languages are supported where the underlying API provides translations:

  • de - Deutsch (default)
  • fr - Francais
  • it - Italiano
  • en - English
  • rm - Rumantsch
chli --lang fr fedlex search "protection des donnees"
chli --lang it parl person --name "Cassis"

Architecture

cmd/          CLI commands (Cobra)
api/          API clients, types, and caching
config/       User configuration
output/       Dual-mode output formatting (table/JSON)

Dependencies: Only Cobra. Everything else uses the Go standard library.

For AI Agents

This repository includes a SKILL.md with project layout, conventions, and recipes for extending chli. Compatible with OpenClaw and other agent frameworks that discover skills via frontmatter-annotated SKILL.md files.

License

MIT

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Unified command-line interface for Swiss federal open data. Access parliament records, federal law, court decisions, the official gazette, and public datasets.

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cli swiss parliamentary-data govdata

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