/ 
App-JobLog-1.042
River stage zero No dependents
/ App::JobLog

NAME

App::JobLog - base of work log application

VERSION

version 1.042

SYNOPSIS

houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job
Available commands:

primary:
        add: log an event
       done: mark current task as done
     resume: resume last task
       when: report when work is done for the day
    summary: list tasks with certain properties in a particular time range
       edit: open a text editor to edit the log

secondary:
      today: what has happened today
       last: describe the last task recorded
       note: take a note
     modify: add details to last event
   truncate: shorten the log to contain only those moments after a given date
   vacation: list or define days off
  configure: set or display various parameters

informational:
       help: display a command's help screen
   commands: list the application's commands
       info: describe job log
       tags: list tags employed in log or some subrange thereof
      parse: parse a time expression

houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job summary this week
Sunday, 27 February, 2011
   8:00 - 9:39 am  1.65  widgets  improving debugging rig to handle batches of files and to print all output to files for later comparison; checking code changes
                                  into github

Monday, 28 February
  8:00 - 10:47 am  2.79  widgets  gussying up pdf conversion

Tuesday,  1 March
   8:00 - 9:23 am  1.39  widgets  adding handling of simplified pdf docs

Friday,  4 March
   1:48 - 2:55 pm  1.11  widgets  trying to get Eclipse working properly again
   3:50 - 5:30 pm  1.66  widgets  figuring out why some files are really, really slow

  TOTAL HOURS 8.60
  widgets     8.60
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job today
No events in interval specified.
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job add --clear-tags messing around
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job a messing around some more
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job done
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job to
Sunday,  6 March, 2011
  9:02 - 9:03 am  0.01  messing around; messing around some more

  TOTAL HOURS 0.01
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job resume
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job to
Sunday,  6 March, 2011
     9:02 - 9:03 am  0.01  messing around; messing around some more
  9:03 am - ongoing  0.00  messing around some more

  TOTAL HOURS 0.01
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job configure --list
day length                          8
editor                   /usr/bin/vim
hidden columns                   none
merge              adjacent same tags
pay period length                  14
precision                           2
start pay period           2009-01-11
sunday begins week               true
time zone                       local
workdays                        MTWHF
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job conf --precision 1
precision set to 1
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job to
Sunday,  6 March, 2011
     9:02 - 9:03 am  0.0  messing around; messing around some more
  9:03 am - ongoing  0.0  messing around some more

  TOTAL HOURS 0.0
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job d
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job note maybe I should take more notes
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job to
Sunday,  6 March, 2011
  9:02 - 9:03 am  0.0  messing around; messing around some more
  9:03 - 9:06 am  0.0  messing around some more

  TOTAL HOURS 0.1
houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ cat ~/.joblog/log

...

2011  3  1  8  0  0:widgets:adding handling of simplified pdf docs
2011  3  1  9 23 24:DONE
# 2011/03/04
2011  3  4 13 48 42:widgets:trying to get Eclipse working properly again
2011  3  4 14 55 34:DONE
2011  3  4 15 50 46:widgets:figuring out why some files are really, really slow
2011  3  4 17 30  7:DONE
# 2011/03/06
2011  3  6  9  2 58::messing around
2011  3  6  9  3 13::messing around some more
2011  3  6  9  3 18:DONE
2011  3  6  9  3 48::messing around some more
2011  3  6  9  6 30:DONE
2011  3  6  9  6 35<NOTE>:maybe I should take more notes

DESCRIPTION

App::JobLog provides a simple command line utility for keeping track of what you do when. The underlying design goals were to keep it fast, simple, and idiot proof and to keep the generated documents human readable and comprehensible. The usual form of such a document is a log -- a series of line-delimited events, each containing a time stamp, a description, and perhaps other meta-data. The problem with a log is that it's usually a little numbing to scroll through it for anything but the most recent events, and with a job log what you usually want isn't time stamps but durations. So in addition to a logging facility we want a report extraction facility. Finally, we often want to filter out particular activities and categorize them in various ways, so along with the time stamps and descriptions we want tags. That's about it. Besides this minimal functionality we want the log to impose as few restrictions as possible so that we don't need to think about how it works. We don't want to worry about characters with special valence so the log has to handle its own escaping of spaces and colons and so forth. We don't want to worry about character encoding so the log has to be in Unicode (utf8).

App::JobLog keeps its documents, by default, in a hidden directory in your home directory called .joblog/. These documents are a README file explaining to anyone who stumbles across the directory what it's function is, a log, called log, a configuration file, called config.ini, a vacation file, called vacation, and perhaps log backups.

To perform any action with App::JobLog one invokes the executable with a command and a list of options. These commands are listed below.

COMMANDS

help

Provides extended help information for a particular command. E.g.

houghton@NorthernSpy:~$ job help summary
job summary [-iMmTtV] [long options...] <date or date range>

List events with certain properties in a particular time range. Only the portions
of events falling within the range will be listed.

Events may be filtered in numerous ways: by tag, time of day, or terms used in descriptions.
...
commands

Provides the list of available commands.

add

Appends an event to the end of the log. See App::JobLog::Command::add.

configure

Lists or modifies configuration parameters. See App::JobLog::Command::configure.

done

Appends an event to the log marking the last event as done. See App::JobLog::Command::done.

edit

Edit the log safely. See App::JobLog::Command::edit.

info

Provides extended general help text. See App::JobLog::Command::info.

last

Describes the last event in the log. See App::JobLog::Command::last.

modify

Modifies the last event in the log. See App::JobLog::Command::modify.

note

Adds a note to the log -- text independent of any task. See App::JobLog::Command::note.

parse

Parse a time expression to discover what the application understands it to mean. See App::JobLog::Command::parse.

resume

Resumes the last closed event in the log. See App::JobLog::Command::resume.

summary

Presents a portion of the log in more human readable form. See App::JobLog::Command::summary.

tags

List only the tags used to categorize tasks. See App::JobLog::Command::tags.

today

Summarizes everything done today. See App::JobLog::Command::today.

truncate

Pares off and stores the older portion of the log. See App::JobLog::Command::truncate.

vacation

Allows viewing and modification of a simple database of vacation times kept separately from the log. See App::JobLog::Command::vacation.

when

Reports when you'll have worked the expected number of hours given how many hours you put in in the specified period (the same day, by default). See App::JobLog::Command::when.

WHY NOT A DATABASE?

We basically want database functionality out of our job log -- random access, selecting rows by various properties, nice reports. Why not use SQLite, say, or Berkeley DB? Well first of all, that adds dependencies, and we want fewer of those. And except in extraordinary circumstances we are only adding events in sequence and we will only be interested in the most recent ones. Even when we don't just want the most recent events we don't need truly random access to the whole log but an interval -- all the lines from one point to another. We only need a slightly glorified log. A database is overkill. Finally, as soon as we maintain our data in a database it becomes an opaque blob and our editing interface becomes much more complicated to write, use, and maintain. We need to write a shell, GUI, or ncurses interface and figure out how to provide the editor with search facilities, the context in which she is making edits, and perhaps an undo/redo stack. If it's a text file we just pop up an editor and validate the log on close. So I stuck with a log.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Ricardo Signes for the redoubtable App::Cmd which wires this all together, Dave Rolsky for DateTime, which does all the calendar math, and Ingy döt Net for IO::All, which, via Tie::File (thanks, Mark Jason Dominus), makes random access to a log file trivial.

Thanks also to my wife Paula, who was my only beta tester other than myself.

SEE ALSO

App::Cmd, DateTime, IO::All

AUTHOR

David F. Houghton <dfhoughton@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2011 by David F. Houghton.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.