A tool to track time and take notes

tl;dr I used notepad.exe (but also code)

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Rationale

Other than wanting an excuse to write more code, I wanted to get better at explaining what happened after a project is completed. I have no trouble explaining my thought process during the project, but after it’s complete, I need to rely on good notes. The git commit messages and comments throughout my code just weren’t enough. I needed a tool to jot down my thoughts in a semi-organized way.

There are probably more automated and better designed apps for this, but I wanted to take notes quickly, without needing to go too far from my coding workspace: a terminal and VSCode.

Notepad.exe

Notepad has a feature that is surprisingly delightful to discover: it will print a timestamp every time you press F5 or every time you open a file that has .LOG as its first line.

Basic syntax

Aliases

I wanted my function names to actually communicate what they were doing, but not take too long to type out. For the function definition, I used actual words. Then I created shorthands like np for notepad to let me work faster in the terminal.

Parameters

I needed two kinds: switches and strings. ‘Switches’ are boolean flags that don’t need a value, because the fact that they’re included in the command means the value of that parameter is true. They also don’t come with a default position.

String parameters do come with a default position: it’s assigned based on the order the parameters were written in the function definition. We can skip specifying the flag if we pass in the parameters in that same order. Otherwise, -flag "string content" for each parameter we pass in.

Wish list

I’d like to tag messages (e.g. bug fix, new tool, new config, new component, etc.), so that it’s easy to see the usual parts of a project. That being said, here’s what I’m currently using.

The complete file

<#
.SYNOPSIS
  Creates a new .LOG file to be opened in Notepad.exe. 
  Default filename = `work-log.txt`; optional parameter to rename file.
#>

Function Create-Log {
  if ($args[0]) {$name = $args[0] + "-log.txt"}
  else {$name = "work-log.txt"}
  echo ".LOG" >> $name
}

Set-Alias -Name nl -Value Create-Log
Set-Alias -Name np -Value notepad

<#
.SYNOPSIS
  Updates a log file created using the `nl` command.
  Default filename = `work-log.txt`. 
  Opens Notepad.exe if no flags or parameters are provided.
.PARAMETER s
  Flag to mark start of a session.
.PARAMETER e 
  Flag to mark end of a session.
.PARAMETER f 
  Filename of log to edit.
.PARAMETER m 
  Message to add to log file.
#>

Function Update-Log {
  param(
    [switch] $s,
    [switch] $e,
    [string] $f,
    [string] $m
  )

  if ($f) {$name = $f}
  else {$name = "work-log.txt"}
  
  if ($s) {echo "`n" $(Get-Date -UFormat "%I:%M %p %Y-%m-%d")"[[START]]" >> $name}
  elseif ($e) {echo "`n" $(Get-Date -UFormat "%I:%M %p %Y-%m-%d")"[[END]]" >> $name}
  elseif ($m) {echo "`n" $(Get-Date -UFormat "%I:%M %p %Y-%m-%d") $m >> $name}
  else {np $name}
}
Set-Alias -Name ul -Value Update-Log