Taskbook Extended

📓 Tasks, boards & notes for the command-line habitat

Description

By utilizing a simple and minimal usage syntax, that requires a flat learning curve, taskbook-ext enables you to effectively manage your tasks and notes across multiple boards from within your terminal. All data are written atomically to the storage in order to prevent corruptions, and are never shared with anyone or anything. Deleted items are automatically archived and can be inspected or restored at any moment.

Why fork & differences betwen taskbook and taskbook-ext

I wanted a few features included that I wasn't sure fit into the style of the original project. Namely I wanted a system to add events to my calendar, and a way to sync my tasks across devices.

I use taskbook extensively and to do some of these things the way I wanted I figured I might end up making drastic changes to the codebase, so I forked. I'd be more than happy to combine the codebases down the road if thats what the original author would want.

TODO:
[x] Add fantastical 2 support
[] Move away from current arg parsing system
[] Implement multiple calendars support
[] Sync tasks across devices
~~[] Rewrite in rust to improve morality~~

Highlights

• Organize tasks & notes to boards
• Board & timeline views
• Priority & favorite mechanisms
• Search & filter items
• Archive & restore deleted items
• Lightweight & fast
• Data written atomically to storage
• Custom storage location
• Progress overview
• Simple & minimal usage syntax
• Update notifications
• Configurable through ~/.taskbook.json
• Data stored in JSON file at ~/.taskbook/storage

View highlights in a taskbook board.

Contents

• Description
• Highlights
• Install
• Usage
• Views
• Configuration
• Flight Manual
• Development
• Related
• Team
• License

Install

NPM

npm install --global taskbook-ext

Usage

$ tb --help

  Usage
    $ tb [<options> ...]

    Options
        none             Display board view
      --task, -t         Create task
      --note, -n         Create note
      --timeline, -i     Display timeline view
      --delete, -d       Delete item
      --check, -c        Check/uncheck task
      --star, -s         Star/unstar item
      --copy, -y         Copy item description
      --list, -l         List items by attributes
      --find, -f         Search for items
      --edit, -e         Edit item description
      --move, -m         Move item between boards
      --priority, -p     Update priority of task
      --archive, -a      Display archived items
      --restore, -r      Restore items from archive
      --clear            Delete all checked items
      --help, -h         Display help message
      --version, -v      Display installed version
      --calendar, -g     Add the provided task to your (fantastical 2) calendar with the specified time

    Examples
      $ tb
      $ tb --task Make some buttercream
      $ tb --task @coding Improve documentation
      $ tb --task @coding @reviews Review PR #42
      $ tb --note @coding Mergesort worse-case O(nlogn)
      $ tb --check 1 2
      $ tb --delete 4
      $ tb --star 2
      $ tb --copy 1 2 3
      $ tb --priority @3 2
      $ tb --timeline
      $ tb --edit @3 Merge PR #42
      $ tb --move @1 cooking
      $ tb --find documentation
      $ tb --list pending coding
      $ tb --archive
      $ tb --restore 4
      $ tb --clear
      $ tb -g "Today at 5:00PM" -t Add things to my calendar

Views

Board View

Invoking taskbook-ext without any options will display all saved items grouped into their respective boards.

Timeline View

In order to display all items in a timeline view, based on their creation date, the --timeline/-i option can be used.

Configuration

To configure taskbook-ext navigate to the ~/.taskbook.json file and modify any of the options to match your own preference. To reset back to the default values, simply delete the config file from your home directory.

The following illustrates all the available options with their respective default values.

{
  "taskbookDirectory": "~",
  "displayCompleteTasks": true,
  "displayProgressOverview": true
}

In Detail

taskbookDirectory

• Type: String
• Default: ~

Filesystem path where the storage will be initialized, i.e: /home/username/the-cloud or ~/the-cloud

If left undefined the home directory ~ will be used and taskbook-ext will be set-up under ~/.taskbook/.

displayCompleteTasks

• Type: Boolean
• Default: true

Display tasks that are marked as complete.

displayProgressOverview

• Type: Boolean
• Default: true

Display progress overview below the timeline and board views.

Flight Manual

The following is a minor walkthrough containing a set of examples on how to use taskbook-ext. In case you spotted an error or think that an example is not to clear enough and should be further improved, please feel free to open an issue or pull request.

Create Task

To create a new task use the --task/-t option with your task's description following right after.

$ tb -t Improve documentation

Create Note

To create a new note use the --note/-n option with your note's body following right after.

$ tb -n Mergesort worse-case O(nlogn)

Create Board

Boards are automatically initialized when creating a new task or note. To create one or more boards, include their names, prefixed by the @ symbol, in the description of the about-to-be created item. As a result the newly created item will belong to all of the given boards. By default, items that do not contain any board names in their description are automatically added to the general purpose; My Board.

$ tb -t @coding @docs Update contributing guidelines

Check Task

To mark a task as complete/incomplete, use the --check/-c option followed by the ids of the target tasks. Note that the option will update to its opposite the complete status of the given tasks, thus checking a complete task will render it as pending and a pending task as complete. Duplicate ids are automatically filtered out.

$ tb -c 1 3

Star Item

To mark one or more items as favorite, use the --star/-s option followed by the ids of the target items. The functionality of this option is the same as the one of the above described --check option.

$ tb -s 1 2 3

Copy Item Description

To copy to your system's clipboard the description of one or more items, use the --copy/-y option followed by the ids of the target items. Note that the option will also include the newline character as a separator to each pair of adjacent copied descriptions, thus resulting in a clear and readable stack of sentences on paste.

$ tb -y 1 2 3

Display Boards

Invoking taskbook-ext without any options will display all of saved items grouped into their respective boards.

$ tb

Display Timeline

In order to display all items in a timeline view, based on their creation date, the --timeline/-i option can be used.

$ tb -i

Set Priority

To set a priority level for a task while initializing it, include the p:x syntax in the task's description, where x can be an integer of value 1, 2 or 3. Note that all tasks by default are created with a normal priority - 1.

• 1 - Normal priority
• 2 - Medium priority
• 3 - High priority

$ tb -t @coding Fix issue `#42` p:3

To update the priority level of a specific task after its creation, use the --priority/-p option along with the id the target task, prefixed by the @ symbol, and an integer of value 1, 2 or 3. Note that the order in which the target id and priority level are placed is not significant.

$ tb -p @1 2

Move Item

To move an item to one or more boards, use the --move/-m option, followed by the target item id, prefixed by the @ symbol, and the name of the destination boards. The default My board can be accessed through the myboard keyword. The order in which the target id and board names are placed is not significant.

$ tb -m @1 myboard reviews

Delete Item

To delete one or more items, use the --delete/-d options followed by the ids of the target items. Note that deleted items are automatically archived, and can be inspected or restored at any moment. Duplicate ids are automatically filtered out.

$ tb -d 1 2

Delete Checked Tasks

To delete/clear all complete tasks at once across all boards, use the --clear option. Note that all deleted tasks are automatically archived, and can be inspected or restored at any moment. In order to discourage any possible accidental usage, the --clear option has no available shorter alias.

$ tb --clear

Display Archive

To display all archived items, use the --archive/-a option. Note that all archived items are displayed in timeline view, based on their creation date.

$ tb -a

Restore Items

To restore one or more items, use the --restore/-r option followed by the ids of the target items. Note that the ids of all archived items can be seen when invoking the --archive/-a option. Duplicate ids are automatically filtered out.

$ tb -r 1 2

List Items

To list a group of items where each item complies with a specif number of attributes, use the --list/-l option followed by the desired attributes. Board names along with item traits can be considered valid listing attributes. For example to list all items that belong to the default myboard and are pending tasks, the following could be used;

$ tb -l myboard pending

The by default supported listing attributes, together with their respective aliases, are the following;

• myboard - Items that belong to My board
• task, tasks, todo - Items that are tasks.
• note, notes - Items that are notes.
• pending, unchecked, incomplete - Items that are pending tasks.
• done, checked, complete - Items that complete tasks.
• star, starred - Items that are starred.

Search Items

To search for one of more items, use the --find/-f option, followed by your search terms.

$ tb -f documentation

Development

For more info on how to contribute to the project, please read the contributing guidelines.

• Fork the repository and clone it to your machine
• Navigate to your local fork: cd taskbook-ext
• Install the project dependencies: npm install or yarn install
• Lint the code for errors: npm test or yarn test

Related

• chalk - Terminal string styling done right
• signale - Hackable console logger

Team

• Jacob Johnston (@johnstonjacob)

License

Credit to The original taskbook MIT