How to change color of Conky text via file/script?

Question

I have a file which contains one word, "green", "yellow" or "red" (this file is updated via a cron job.

I would like to use that color to display text in Conky. The actual text would stay the same, but the color would update depending on that file. Does anyone know of a way to make this work? Thanks!

Answer 1

Create a bash-script that outputs ${color yourcolor} :

#!/bin/bash

start="\${color "
color=$(cat color-file)
end="}"
echo -n $start$color$end

And run it in conky (every 10 seconds):

${execpi 10 /path/to/script.sh} Colored text here {color}

Something nested like ${color ${head /path/to/color-file 10}} might also work.