Hadaf Syntax

A library to parse and stringify Hadaf documents.

The hadaf Syntax

I created the hadaf syntax to make it easy to write and manipulate todo documents. My goal was to have a simple text syntax that is easy to read and write, but also easy to parse and manipulate programmatically. Here is a tour of the syntax:

A document is a list of items

When the following document is parsed:

Implement the hadaf syntax library
Write the tests
Write the documentation

It gives the following result:

[
  {
    "text": "Implement the hadaf syntax library"
  },
  {
    "text": "Write the tests"
  },
  {
    "text": "Write the documentation"
  }
]

Items can have tags

Let add some tags to the tasks:

Implement the hadaf syntax library @project:hadaf.syntax @coding
Write the tests @project:hadaf.syntax @testing @estimation:4h
Write the documentation @project:hadaf.syntax @writing @file:README.md

This will be parsed as:

[
  {
    "text": "Implement the hadaf syntax library",
    "tags": [
      {"name": "project", "type": "text", "value": "hadaf.syntax"},
      {"name": "coding", "type": "boolean", "value": true}
    ]
  },
  {
    "text": "Write the tests",
    "tags": [
      {"name": "project", "type": "text", "value": "hadaf.syntax"},
      {"name": "testing", "type": "boolean", "value": true},
      {"name": "estimation", "type": "duration", "value": 240}
    ]
  },
  {
    "text": "Write the documentation",
    "tags": [
      {"name": "project", "type": "text", "value": "hadaf.syntax"},
      {"name": "writing", "type": "boolean", "value": true},
      {"name": "file", "type": "text", "value": "README.md"}
    ]
  }
]

Items can have sub-items

Let's add some sub-items to the first tasks:

Implement the hadaf syntax library @project:hadaf.syntax @coding
  Write the `parse` function @estimation:2h
  Write the `stringify` function @estimation:2h

This will be parsed as:

[
  {
    "text": "Implement the hadaf syntax library",
    "tags": [
      {"name": "project", "type": "text", "value": "hadaf.syntax"},
      {"name": "coding", "type": "boolean", "value": true}
    ],
    "items": [
      {
        "text": "Write the `parse` function",
        "tags": [
          {"name": "estimation", "type": "duration", "value": 120}
        ]
      },
      {
        "text": "Write the `stringify` function",
        "tags": [
          {"name": "estimation", "type": "duration", "value": 120}
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]

Items can have a title

We can add a prefix to the item's text followed by a colon to make it a title, which is useful when combined with sub-items:

hadaf.syntax: @open-source
  Implement the hadaf syntax library
  Write the tests
  Write the documentation

This will be parsed as:

[
  {
    "title": "hadaf.syntax",
    "tags": [
      {"name": "open-source", "type": "boolean", "value": true}
    ],
    "items": [
      {
        "text": "Implement the hadaf syntax library"
      },
      {
        "text": "Write the tests"
      },
      {
        "text": "Write the documentation"
      }
    ]
  }
]

Supported tag types and values

• boolean: @flag, @unwanted:false, @wanted:true
• number: @integer:123, @double:123.45
• duration: @duration-minutes:15m, @duration-hours:5h, @duration-both:2h15m
• date: @date:25/03/2024, @time:14h05, @datetime:15/07/2024_11h45
• list: @items:foo,bar,baz
• text: Any other format is considered text, like @project:hadaf.syntax, @file:README.md