Initial Release v0.2.0

I'm proud to announce the first release of mdbook-journal @ v0.2.0. There is still more to come; however, I believe this project has enough to get started with. In this post I'll outline what is currently available and what is yet to come!

What's in v0.2.0?

Presently your journal can define any number of "topics". A topic in this case represents a collection of similar items that share a common data set. To create a new "entry" for a topic use the following command:

mdbook-journal new <TOPIC_NAME>

This will use the settings for TOPIC_NAME to generate a new entry.

Topic Settings

A topic presently defines three major concepts:

  • path_mapping

    A handlebars template which describes what file structure to use when creating a new instance of a topic. This template can refer to data defined by the topic AND also has access to the time in which it was created.

    To reference any user defined topic data simply wrap it in handlebars. It should also be noted that there is a number of string modifiers built in you can can take advantage of, such as titleCase and kebabCase.

    The entire string is also interpolate with date-time formatting tokens. For instance if your template had the %Y token it would be replaced with the YYYY four digit calendar year.

  • template

    This is very similar to the handlebars template based path mapping, but it is used to populate a newly created topic entry. Use it as a starter for a new entry with the high level structure of subjects you want to address, etc.

  • variables

    A hash definition describing all of the data you want every entry to collect for a topic. Each key translates to a data-point key that is collected and the value is hash of settings. Here is the following settings each key can have:

    • required (boolean) (default false)

      If true a "non-empty" value is expected.

    • default (string) (default "")

      If a value is not provided this is the default used

Rendering Output

The rendering is very minimal. All topics are added to the summary at render time and are displayed in a directory structure format that follows the entries path on disk.

What's Coming Next?

  • Templated Topic Layout

    A feature that allows you to define how entries are displayed for a topic. There are many different formats for representing entry data. I want topics to be able to dynamically update where and how they display data as the information on it is updated.

  • Programatic Entry Interface

    Ultimately I envision this cli tool being driven by a neovim plugin. Aside from that, I believe it would be extremely handy to support entry like this:

    mdbook-journal new TOPIC --json '{"title":"Test Title"}'

  • SQL Structured Searching

    The idea is still loose; but I want to support something like the following:

    mdbook-journal query TOPIC /
  "SELECT filename FROM entry WHERE category = 'rust'"