noteboard

A taskbook clone written in Python

noteboard is a mini command-line tool which lets you manage and store your notes & tasks in a tidy and fancy way, right inside your terminal.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Behind the Board
• Installation
  • Source
  • PyPI
  • Dependencies
• Usage
  • View board
  • Add item
  • Remove item
  • Clear board
  • Tick / Mark / Star item
  • Edit item
  • Tag item
  • Assign due date to item
  • Move item
  • Rename bard
  • Run item as command
  • Undo previous actions
  • Import board from external JSON file
  • Export board data as JSON file
  • Historical Changes
• Configurations
• Cautions
• Contributing
• Credit

Features

• Fancy interface ✨
• Simple & Easy to use 🚀
• Fast as lightning ⚡️
• Manage notes & tasks in multiple boards 🗒
• Run item as command inside terminal (subprocess) 💨
• Tag item with color and text 🏷
• Import boards from external JSON files & Export boards as JSON files
• Undo multiple actions / changes
• Keep historical states 🕥
• Gzip compressed storage 📚
• Configurable through ~/.noteboard.json

Behind the Board

The main storage is powered by shelve, a Python standard library, which provides a lightweight & persistent file-based database system. Whereas the "history" system (the one which allows you to undo previous actions), is backed by a json file.

Notably, the storage and the buffer are compressed to gzip when it is not being accessed. This greatly reduces the sizes of the files by more than 50%.

Installation

Make sure you have Python 3.6 (or higher) installed in your machine.

NOTE: You should remove all the data stored in <StoragePath> (default: ~/.noteboard/) every time you install a new version to avoid conflicts.

Source

$ git clone https://github.com/tnychn/noteboard.git
$ cd noteboard
$ python3 setup.py install

PyPI

$ pip3 install noteboard

Dependencies

colorama

Usage

Actions:
    add                 [+] Add an item to a board
    remove              [-] Remove items
    clear               [x] Clear all items on a/all boards
    tick                [✓] Tick/Untick an item
    mark                [!] Mark/Unmark an item
    star                [*] Star/Unstar an item
    edit                [~] Edit the text of an item
    tag                 [#] Tag an item with text
    due                 [:] Assign a due date to an item
    run                 [>] Run an item as command
    move                [&] Move an item to another board
    rename              [~] Rename the name of the board
    undo                [^] Undo the last action
    import              [I] Import and load boards from JSON file
    export              [E] Export boards as a JSON file
    history             [.] Prints out the historical changes

Options:
    -h, --help          show this help message and exit
    --version           show program's version number and exit
    -d, --date          show boards with the added date of every item
    -s, --sort          show boards with items on each board sorted alphabetically
    -t, --timeline      show boards in timeline view, ignore the -d/--date option

View board

$ board

• -d/--date : show boards with the last modified date of each item in the format of <weekday> <day> <month> <year>. e.g. Fri 25 Jan 2019
• -s/--sort : show boards with items on each board sorted alphabetically by the text of the items
• -t, --timeline : show boards in timeline view, ignore the -d/--date option

NOTE: If -d/--date is specified, items of each board will be sorted by their dates from the most recent to the oldest ones.

Add item

$ board add <item text> [<item text> ...]

• -b/--board <name> : add the item to this board

If no board name is specified, the item will be added to the default board.

Board will be automatically initialized if one does not exist.

Remove item

$ board remove <item id> [<item id> ...]

Clear board

Remove all items in the board.

$ board clear [<name> [<name> ...]]

If no board name is specified, all boards will be cleared.

Tick / Mark / Star item

$ board {tick, mark, star} <item id> [<item id> ...]

Run this command again on the same item to untick/unmark/unstar the item.

Edit item

$ board edit <item id> <new text>

Tag item

$ board tag <item id> [<item id> ...]

• -t/--text <tag text> : tag the item with this text

If no text is given, existing tag of this item will be removed.

Color of the tag text is specified in configurations.

Assign due date to item

$ board due <item id> [<item id> ...]

• -d/--date : due date of the item in the format of <digit><d|w>[<digit><d|w> ...] (d for day and w for week) e.g. 1w4d for 1 week 4 days (11 days)

If no date is given, existing due date of this item will be removed.

Move item

$ board move <item id> [<item id> ...]

• -b/--board <name> : move the item to this board

If board does not exist, one will be created.

Rename board

$ board rename <name> <new name>

Run item as command

$ board run <item id>

This will spawn a subprocess to execute the command.

NOTE: Some commands may not work properly in subprocess, such as pipes.

Undo previous actions

$ board undo

Actions that cannot be undone:

• run
• undo
• export
• history

Import board from external JSON file

$ board import <path>

NOTE: This will overwrite all the current data of boards.

The JSON file must be in a valid structure according to the following.

{
    "Board Name": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "text": "item text",
            "time": "<last modified timestamp>",
            "date": "<human readable date format (auto manipulated by noteboard)>",
            "due": "<due date timstamp>",
            "tick": false,
            "mark": false,
            "star": false,
            "tag": "<tag text>"
        }
    ]
}

Export board data as JSON file

$ board export

• -d/--dest <destination path> : destination path of the exported file (directory)

The exported JSON file is named board.json.

Historical Changes

$ board history

Configurations

Path: ~/.noteboard.json

{
    "StoragePath": "~/.noteboard/",
    "DefaultBoardName": "Board",
    "Tags": {
        "default": "BLUE"
    }
}

• StoragePath : path to the custom storage path (where the data and log file are stored)
• DefaultBoardName : default board name, is used when no board is specified when adding item
• Tags : colors preset of tags
  • default : [required] this color is used if no corresponding color of the tag text is found in config
  • <tag text> : specify your custom tag colors by adding <tag text>: <color> to Tags attribute of the config

NOTE: color must be upper cased and a valid attribute of colorama.Fore. E.g. LIGHTBLUE_EX for light blue and CYAN for cyan.

Cautions

Some terminal emulators may not support dimmed (Style.DIM) & underlined (\033[4m) text.

The program also uses symbols such as ⭑ and ✔ which also may not be displayed properly if a wrong encodings is set.

Contributing

Feel free to open issues for bug reports and feature requests ! If you are reporting bugs, please include the log file <StoragePath>/noteboard.log.

Credit

This project is inspired by @Klaus Sinani's taskbook.