✅ Feature Request:iwe new feature

[knolljo]

An iwe new cli command similar to zk new --title "Something" would be great. https://zk-org.github.io/zk/notes/note-creation.html

This command should create a new note (markdown file) with a key_template string from the --title option and create a new note with some kind of document_template for example

document_template = """# {{title}}

Here goes the content
"""

I'm willing to submit or help with a PR if this feature is accepted.

[aggrand]

Even further, some sort of ability to search for a file and create if it doesn't exist would be great. I used that all the time in org-roam.

[gimalay]

It sounds more like editor specific feature, not LSP. We can add this to the nvim plugin.

[aggrand]

Makes sense. I think that the list of symbols + telescope makes it possible, it's sorta an extension of symbol search. I'll try hacking it together for at least my own use and I'll open a PR upstream if it works well. Thank you!

[aggrand]

Hmm actually looking into it a bit more, there's a lot of configuration here for generation of filenames on extract. It seems like "insert" of a file would want similar behaviors. e.g. if a user has key_template = "{{today}}-{{slug}}" then they'd be surprised if extractions honor that but insertions do not. Plus the behavior of collision handling. (EDIT: well actually in the config there's different configs for different operations and how the key_template is set. So maybe not surprising but still a re-impl of similar logic)

It would definitely be possible to parse the config file and re-implement the key templating and collision logic in lua, but then there would be two sources of truth for this logic that need to be kept in sync. It seems like the lua code wants to be able to say to the iwe backend "Hey I want a file titled 'Some random title'. Can you please sanitize the name, generate a unique file based off of it given the user's config, then return me the filename?"

(EDIT) Hmm maybe it'd be possible to implement in the lua as a blank extraction somehow but that might feel hacky

[gimalay]

We can add more commands to the CLI util if needed. You are making a good point about having the logic (file name generation) in one place.

[gimalay]

@aggrand the templating logic is available via CLI command now. Please feel free to open a PR in the Neovim plugin repo if you want, I will happy to merge this feature.

[gimalay]

We can consider adding iwe new to CLI. But I would recommend using extract command to create files directly from your text editor. Extract command can be configured to create files using the title or random ID in the file name. Please check the video with the details. (its recorded using VIM)

recording.mov

What are the benefits of CLI command? Are you looking into some kind of command chaining/automation?

[luogni]

Hi! Thanks for iwe, I'm trying to use it together with helix but still not sure 100%. I'm a long time org/emacs user and I always used org-capture via org-protocol (https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-protocol.html) to add notes to my org Inbox from different programs, for example Firefox or RSS reader. What's the best way to do it with iwe/helix?

Use case:

• I'm browsing web and find a cool project
• I don't have time right now to look at it
• I do something and this link is added to my Inbox

[gimalay]

I personally just paste the link into inbox note if I need to get back to it later. I don't use any kind of capture tools. Maybe someone else here can recommend something.

[aggrand]

I have this quick bash script I made for this. It's on my PATH so I just type "in":

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -eou pipefail


INBOX_MD="${HOME}/notes/inbox.md"
SCRATCH_MD="/tmp/scratch-in.md"

CREATION_DATE=$(date)

nvim ${SCRATCH_MD}

if [ ! -f ${SCRATCH_MD} ] || [ ! -s ${SCRATCH_MD} ]; then
    rm ${SCRATCH_MD} &> /dev/null || true  # Silence error if nonexistent
    echo "Empty input; aborting capture"
    exit
fi

echo >> ${INBOX_MD}
echo >> ${INBOX_MD}
echo "## ${CREATION_DATE}" >> ${INBOX_MD}
cat ${SCRATCH_MD} >> ${INBOX_MD}

rm ${SCRATCH_MD}

[gimalay]

I added iwe new command which supports a few ways to create new files (including piping the content from external command) as well as templating capabilities via the iwe config file. Please see the documentation for additional details.

https://github.com/iwe-org/iwe/blob/master/docs/features-cli.md#iwe-new

@hannesknoll, @aggrand please let me know if it works for you.