airbornelamb / cli-notes

Simple but effective markdown notes in the terminal

What is this project?

I got tired of paying for Evernote and searched endlessly for a note system that was flexible and extremely fast. I wanted it all: plaintext markdown notes in simple folders with fulltext search. Yet everything out there seemed to compromise in one of these areas.

Getting Started

This project contains only two simple things which are contained in this readme:

1. An append to vimrc that will install FZF and ripgrep for you
2. A shell alias and functions to wrap those tools into something usable for notes

Installing

You must first install ripgrep and fzf. Below is the easiest way to do that.

1. Paste this section at the top of your vimrc, which will cause vim to install ripgrep

""" Auto Installation credit to https://github.com/bag-man/dotfiles
if !empty(glob("~/.fzf/bin/fzf"))
    if empty(glob("~/.fzf/bin/rg"))
      silent !curl -fLo /tmp/rg.tar.gz
            \ https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases/download/0.7.1/ripgrep-0.7.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz
      silent !tar xzvf /tmp/rg.tar.gz --directory /tmp
      silent !cp /tmp/ripgrep-0.7.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/rg ~/.fzf/bin/rg
    endif
endif

2. Now paste this into your plugin section to install fzf. Change the beginning to reflect which plugin system you are using (vundle etc). I am using Plug by the same author as fzf, JuneGunn.

Plug 'junegunn/fzf', { 'dir': '~/.fzf', 'do': './install --all' }

3. Run your plugin updater, for example vim :PlugUpdate for Plug

4. Lastly, copy the following into your shell rc file (.zshrc, .bashrc etc...). I have the NOTESDIR as the default for Syncthing, which is awesome.

export NOTESDIR="$HOME/Sync/notes"

nn() {
  local note_name="$*"
  local note_date="`date +%F`"
  local note_ext="md"  
  if [[ $note_name == "" ]]
  then
    note_name="$note_date.$note_ext"
  fi
  mkdir -p $NOTESDIR
  vim -c 'startinsert' "$NOTESDIR/$note_name"
}

ns() {
  local file
  [ -z "$1" ] && echo "No argument supplied - Enter a term to search" && return 1
  file="$(rg --files-with-matches --no-ignore --ignore-case --hidden --no-heading --no-messages $1 $NOTESDIR | fzf --preview "head -100 {}")"
  if [[ -n $file ]]
  then
    vim $file
  fi
}

nl() {
  local files
  files="$(rg --files $NOTESDIR | fzf --preview "head -100 {}")"
  if [[ -n $files ]]; then
    vim $files
  fi
}

Usage

Congratulations! You now have three functions

• Typing nn (short for New Note) will trigger vim to open straight into insert mode ready to type a note with today's date as the filename.
• Typing nn FILENAME will do the same thing but with the filename you specify.
• Typing ns TERM (short for Note Search) will ripgrep inside your text files for a search term, then you will visually see the results and choose to open one in vim.
• Typing nl (short for Note List) will bring up a visual list of all your notes for you to open one in vim