--- title: In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service | daily.dev description: Emacs can act as a client for virtually any service by leveraging its built-in libraries (URL, sockets, SMTP, SQLite) and Elisp's dynamic nature. The post... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/in-emacs-everything-looks-like-a-service-kozwxx5tv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service | daily.dev og:description: Emacs can act as a client for virtually any service by leveraging its built-in libraries (URL, sockets, SMTP, SQLite) and Elisp's dynamic nature. The post... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/in-emacs-everything-looks-like-a-service-kozwxx5tv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kOzWXX5tv.png og:image:alt: In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Emacs can act as a client for virtually any service by leveraging its built-in libraries (URL, sockets, SMTP, SQLite) and Elisp's dynamic nature. The post walks through building a weather client using the wttr.in JSON API in about 67 lines of Elisp, demonstrating how Emacs orchestrates HTTP requests, JSON parsing, and UI display. It also shows how shell commands can be treated as local 'services', making integration with external utilities straightforward. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Emacs is My New Window Manager](https://daily.dev/posts/emacs-is-my-new-window-manager-7bh6jrhai) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Emacs is my browser](https://daily.dev/posts/emacs-is-my-browser-vqydam9i1) · Lobsters · 28 upvotes · 1 comments - [Emacs as a programmable workbench](https://daily.dev/posts/emacs-as-a-programmable-workbench-fnxwvzmws) · BirkeyCo · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Emacs salmagundi, 2026-10-11](https://daily.dev/posts/emacs-salmagundi-2026-10-11-gm9bzek2f) · Planet Haskell · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#rest-api](https://daily.dev/tags/rest-api) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/in-emacs-everything-looks-like-a-service-kozwxx5tv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/in-emacs-everything-looks-like-a-service-kozwxx5tv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/in-emacs-everything-looks-like-a-service-kozwxx5tv"},"datePublished":"2026-07-10T12:03:54.727Z","dateModified":"2026-07-10T12:04:15.644Z","description":"Emacs can act as a client for virtually any service by leveraging its built-in libraries (URL, sockets, SMTP, SQLite) and Elisp's dynamic nature. 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