Note 🐪

Note is a simple CLI based note taking application.

A note is a simple markdown document that contains zero or more instances of structured data encoded as YAML or JSON. Notes can optionally contain front-matter at the head of each file, which is YAML or JSON enclosed by a pair of ---.

---
title: This is a Note
tags: [ocaml, programming]
---
# Hello World!
Today will be a nice day.

The behavior of note can be configured with yaml file stored in ~/.config/note/config.yaml and configure itself per the XDG Base Directory specification. You can view the resolved configuration by running note config:

state_dir: /home/kevin/.local/share/note
lock_file: /home/kevin/.local/share/note.lock
editor: nvim
on_modification: note_commit.sh

Notes that contain code blocks with structured data as well as front-matter are automatically parsed and exposed via the command API.

note create -stdin <<EOF

# Musical Styles

```yaml
- style: Bomba
  influenced:
  - style: Plena
  - style: Reggaetón
    influenced:
    - style: Bachatón
```
EOF

# Now let's inspect the code block with jq
note cat -encoding json "Musical Styles" | jq .data[0]
[
  {
    "style": "Bomba",
    "influenced": [
      {
        "style": "Plena"
      },
      {
        "style": "Reggaetón",
        "influenced": [
          {
            "style": "Bachatón"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]

Each note is stored as a flat file inside the state_dir with a slug that corresponds to the date (YYYYMMDD) on which it was created. If multiple notes are created on one day, an index will be appended to the file.

$ tree ~/.local/share/note/
/home/kevin/.local/share/note/
├── note-20200818-1.md
├── note-20200819-1.md
├── note-20200819-2.md
└── note-20200819-3.md

If the on_modification configuration option is set it will be called each time a note is modified. This feature can be used to automatically commit your notes to a git repository with a script such as below:

#!/bin/bash
# This is an example script that can be used in conjunction with the
# on_modification config option to commit every note change to a git
# repository. You'll need to place it somewhere on your $PATH. This
# script assumes that your state_dir is also a git repository.
set -e

STATE_DIR="$(note config -get state_dir)"

pushd "$STATE_DIR"
git add --all
git commit -m 'automated commit'
popd

Notes are stored in a format that is compatible with the static website generator Hugo and thus you can point your state_dir to a Hugo content directory and get a web based interface for all of your notes.