Note

Note is a templating tool to enable quick creation of notes with useful meta information.

Documentation

Note makes it easier to take notes by reading a template file, populating it with runtime data, and opening the result in an editor. It is useful to create templates for specific types of notes, such as internal meeting notes, client meetings, task notes, or even Readme.md that would quickly be populated with useful information with ease.

1. Install note as you would any Golang cli application.
2. Ensure that your $EDITOR environmental variable is set.
3. Run note using note This is my first note
4. note will take the arguments and use them as the Title of the note, and in templates.
5. The default template will be used.

Usage

Usage:
        note [options] <Title of note>

Options:

  -t, --template string   The file to use as a template
      --title string      Use this to pre-populate the title variable in a template.
      --slug string       Use this to pre-populate the slug variable.
      --content string    Use this to pre-populate the content variable in a template.
      --date string       Use this to pre-populate the date variable in a template.

Note:
        The title flag _or_ title arguments is required.

        The date flag must be in one of these formats
                2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00
                2006-01-02 15:04:05
                2006-01-02

Default note template

The default template is built into note itself, and will be used unless another template is specified on the command line by using the -t or --template flag. The default note template uses TOML structured data for frontmatter.

+++ # {{ makeSlug .Title }}.md
title = "{{ .Title }}"
created_at = "{{ dateFormat "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" .Date }}"
modified_at = "{{ dateFormat "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" .Date }}"
+++

{{ .Content }}

Filename template

The name used for the file can be customized using a template. This filename-template is defined on the very first line of the note template. It uses the Go template syntax, and is preceeded by a # mark.

+++ # {{ dateFormat "20060102" .Date }}__{{ makeSlug .Title }}.md
title = "{{ .Title }}"
created_at = "{{ dateFormat "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" .Date }}"
modified_at = "{{ dateFormat "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" .Date }}"
+++

{{ .Content }}

Creating your own template

It is straight forward enough to create your own template. Note uses the Golang templates format.

1. Create a text file, and use any of the available template values
2. Run note -t mytemplate.txt

Example custom template

Title: {{ .Title }}
Date: {{ dateFormat "2 January 2006" .Date }}

{{ .Content }}

Most of the time the .Content value will be empty, however it is still useful to include it for the rare times when text is passed in with the --content flag.

Available template values

• .Title is the title of the note, either from the arguments, or input from the --title flag.
• .TitleSlug is the title normalized to a URL safe string, suitable as a filename.
• .Date is a Go time.Time data type.
• .Content is any content passed to note by using the --content flag.

Available template functions

There are functions available in a template to help transform data.

dateFormat is a function that takes a format string, a time.Time data type, and outputs the date as the format string.

{{ dateFormat "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" .Date }}

{{ dateFormat "2006-01-02" .Date }}

{{ dateFormat "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 -0700 MST 2006" .Date }}

See the Golang time.Format documentation for details on the specifics of the format string.