yournal.py

Fast (y)ournal script to make daily notes from your terminal.

Features

• 🍃 Lighweight, fast and snappy. It is a pure Python script.
• 📅 [yesterday | today | tomorrow ] date navigation.
• 🔧 Enviroment variables based configuration.
• 📄 Simple template support.

Usage

🍃 First open

In your shell, you can try one of these commands:

python yournal.py

./yournal.py

Or if you installed it..

yournal

📅 Open/create daily note by date

yournal [yesterday|today|tomorrow]

By default, the daily note will be opened with your EDITOR variable. If this fails, the default text editor of your system will be used.

🔧📄 Configuration and templates

yournal -d <path/to/dir> -t <path/to/template>

For persistent configuration see this.

Installation

Minium Python version: 3.8

Pipx (Recommended)

The easy way. If you have Pipx installed simply type in your shell:

pipx install yournal

Pip

The classic way. Type in your shell:

pip install yournal

AUR (Arch Linux)

Use an AUR helper such as:

paru -S yournal

yay -S yournal

Manual

Download the lastest release and get the yournal.py file.

You can use this script directly with python yournal.py, but for a better integration, add the yournal.py file to your system PATH.

• For example, a common Linux user PATH is: ~/.local/bin.
• For other systems, please investigate.

Rename yournal.py to yournal if you want a shorter command.

Configuration

Enviroment variables

By default, yournal will create the daily notes in the current working directory, along with other settings To change this behavior, you need to set these environment variables on your system:

• YOURNAL_EXTENSION for daily note file extension
• YOURNAL_DIRECTORY for the directory where the daily notes will be saved.
• YOURNAL_TEMPLATE for the template file to use.

Shell aliases

You can create a shell alias for yournal with custom arguments.

In Bash you can do this by adding the following to your .bashrc file. For Zsh, in .zshrc.

alias yournal="yournal -d path/to/dir -t path/to/template"

CLI (Command Line Interface)

usage: yournal [-x EXTENSION] [-d DIRECTORY] [-t TEMPLATE] [-h] [-i] [-e EDITOR] [{yesterday,today,tomorrow}]

Fast (y)ournal script to make daily notes on your terminal.

dates:
  {yesterday,today,tomorrow}
                        open daily note by date. DEFAULT: today

paths:
  -x EXTENSION, --extension EXTENSION
                        set daily note file extension. DEFAULT: "md" (markdown)
  -d DIRECTORY, --directory DIRECTORY
                        directory where save your daily notes. DEFAULT: cwd (current working directory)
  -t TEMPLATE, --template TEMPLATE
                        template file to use

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i, --ignore          ignore EDITOR environment variable and use system editor
  -e EDITOR, --editor EDITOR
                        use a custom editor command

By default, yournal uses these environment variables when no arguments are provided:
    YOURNAL_EXTENSION for daily note file extension
    YOURNAL_DIRECTORY for DIRECTORY
    YOURNAL_TEMPLATE for TEMPLATE