.. _recipes:

FAQ
===

Recipes
-------

Co-occurrence of tags
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I want to find out how often I mentioned my flatmates Alberto and Melo in the same entry, I run ::

    jrnl @alberto --tags | grep @melo

And will get something like ``@melo: 9``, meaning there are 9 entries where both ``@alberto`` and ``@melo`` are tagged. How does this work? First, ``jrnl @alberto`` will filter the journal to only entries containing the tag ``@alberto``, and then the ``--tags`` option will print out how often each tag occurred in this `filtered` journal. Finally, we pipe this to ``grep`` which will only display the line containing ``@melo``.

Combining filters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can do things like ::

    jrnl @fixed -starred -n 10 -until "jan 2013" --short

To get a short summary of the 10 most recent, favourited entries before January 1, 2013 that are tagged with ``@fixed``.

Statistics
~~~~~~~~~~

How much did I write last year? ::

    jrnl -from "jan 1 2013" -until "dec 31 2013" | wc -w

Will give you the number of words you wrote in 2013. How long is my average entry? ::

    expr $(jrnl --export text | wc -w) / $(jrnl --short | wc -l)

This will first get the total number of words in the journal and divide it by the number of entries (this works because ``jrnl --short`` will print exactly one line per entry).

Importing older files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you want to import a file as an entry to jrnl, you can just do ``jrnl < entry.ext``. But what if you want the modification date of the file to be the date of the entry in jrnl? Try this ::

    echo `stat -f %Sm -t '%d %b %Y at %H:%M: ' entry.txt` `cat entry.txt` | jrnl

The first part will format the modification date of ``entry.txt``, and then combine it with the contents of the file before piping it to jrnl. If you do that often, consider creating a function in your ``.bashrc`` or ``.bash_profile`` ::

    jrnlimport () {
        echo `stat -f %Sm -t '%d %b %Y at %H:%M: ' $1` `cat $1` | jrnl
    }


Using templates
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Say you always want to use the same template for creating new entries. If you have an :doc:`external editor <advanced>` set up, you can use this ::

    jrnl < my_template.txt
    jrnl -1 --edit

Another nice solution that allows you to define individual prompts comes from `Jacobo de Vera <https://github.com/maebert/jrnl/issues/194#issuecomment-47402869>`_ ::

    function log_question()
    {
       echo $1
       read
       jrnl today: ${1}. $REPLY
    }
    log_question 'What did I achieve today?'
    log_question 'What did I make progress with?'


External editors
----------------

To use external editors for writing and editing journal entries,  set them up in your ``.jrnl_config`` (see :doc:`advanced usage <advanced>` for details). Generally, after writing an entry, you will have to save and close the file to save the changes to jrnl.

Sublime Text
~~~~~~~~~~~~

To use Sublime Text, install the command line tools for Sublime Text and configure your ``.jrnl_config`` like this:

.. code-block:: javascript

    "editor": "subl -w"

Note the ``-w`` flag to make sure jrnl waits for Sublime Text to close the file before writing into the journal.


MacVim
~~~~~~

Similar to Sublime Text, MacVim must be started with a flag that tells the the process to wait until the file is closed before passing control back to journal. In the case of MacVim, this is ``-f``:

.. code-block:: javascript

    "editor": "mvim -f"

iA Writer
~~~~~~~~~

On OS X, you can use the fabulous `iA Writer <http://www.iawriter.com/mac>`_ to write entries. Configure your ``.jrnl_config`` like this:

.. code-block:: javascript

    "editor": "open -b jp.informationarchitects.WriterForMacOSX -Wn"

What does this do? ``open -b ...`` opens a file using the application identified by the bundle identifier (a unique string for every app out there). ``-Wn`` tells the application to wait until it's closed before passing back control, and to use a new instance of the application.


Notepad++ on Windows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To set `Notepad++ <http://notepad-plus-plus.org/>`_ as your editor, edit the jrnl config file (``.jrnl_config``) like this:

.. code-block:: javascript

      "editor": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe -multiInst -nosession",

The double backslashes are needed so jrnl can read the file path correctly. The ``-multiInst -nosession`` options will cause jrnl to open its own Notepad++ window.