tiempo-rs/README.md

# Tiempo

A [timetrap](https://github.com/samg/timetrap/) compatible command line time
tracking application.

## Tutorial

First of all, you can abbreviate all commands to their first letter, so `t in`
and `t i` are equivalent.

### Managing entries

Register the start of an activity in the default timesheet with:

    t in 'Doing some coding'

which sets the activity's start time to the current time. Later when you're done
use

    t out

to mark it as finished. If you forgot to start the activity before you can do so
with:

    t i --at '20 min ago'

the same applies for `t out`.

Edit an entry with

    t edit [options]

where the options are

    -i, --id <id:i>           Alter entry with id <id> instead of the running entry
    -s, --start <time:qs>     Change the start time to <time>
    -e, --end <time:qs>       Change the end time to <time>
    -a, --append              Append to the current note instead of replacing it
                              the delimiter between appended notes is
                              configurable (see configure)
    -m, --move <sheet>        Move to another sheet

You can remove an entry with

    t kill --id 123

or an entire timesheet with

    t kill somesheet

check bellow to see how to get the ids.

### Displaying entries

At any point in time you can check your time spent in the current or other
timesheet with:

    t display [options] [SHEET | all | full]

the available options are

    -v, --ids                 Print database ids (for use with edit)
    -s, --start <date:qs>     Include entries that start on this date or later
    -e, --end <date:qs>       Include entries that start on this date or earlier
    -f, --format <format>     The output format.  Valid built-in formats are
                              ical, csv, json, ids, factor, and text (default).
                              Check the docs on defining custom formats bellow.
    -g, --grep <regexp>       Include entries where the note matches this regexp

Some shortcuts available are:

`today` - Display entries that started today

    t today [--ids] [--format FMT] [SHEET | all]

`yesterday` - Display entries that started yesterday

    t yesterday [--ids] [--format FMT] [SHEET | all]

`week` - Entries of this week so far. The default start of the week is Monday
  (configurable).

    t week [--ids] [--end DATE] [--format FMT] [SHEET | all]

`month` - Entries of this month or a specified one.

    t month [--ids] [--start MONTH] [--format FMT] [SHEET | all]

### Using different timesheets

You can organize your activities in different timesheets by first switching to
an existing one, then starting an activity:

    t sheet somename
    t in 'some activity'

which will also create the timesheet if it doesn't exist.

List all existing timesheets using

    t list [all]

(defaults to not showing archive timesheets with names preceded by an
underscore)

### Advanced management

You can archive entries from a timesheet using:

    t archive [--start DATE] [--end DATE] [SHEET]

which defaults to archiving all entries in the current sheet, or you can be more
specific using these options:

    -s, --start <date:qs>     Include entries that start on this date or later
    -e, --end <date:qs>       Include entries that start on this date or earlier
    -g, --grep <regexp>       Include entries where the note matches this regexp.

This subcommand will move the selected entries to a hidden timesheet named
`_[SHEET]` (the name of the timesheet preceded by an underscore).

It is possible to access directly the sqlite database using

    t backend

## Specifying times

Some arguments accept a time as value, like `t in`'s `--at` or `t d --start`.
These are the accepted formats:

**Something similar to ISO format** will be parsed as a time in the computer's
timezone.

* `2021-01-13` a date
* `2019-05-03 11:13` a date with portions of a time

**ISO format with offset or UTC** will be parsed as a time in the specified
timezone. Use `Z` for `UTC` and an offset for everything else

* `2021-01-13Z`
* `2005-10-14 19:20:35+05:00`

**something that looks like an hour** will be parsed as a time in the current
day in the computer's timezone. Add `Z` or an offset to specify the timezone.

* `11:30`
* `23:50:45` (with seconds)

**some human times**, for now restricted to time ago:

* `an hour ago`
* `a minute ago`
* `50 min ago`
* `1h30m ago`
* `two hours thirty minutes ago`

## Why did you write this instead of improving timetrap?

* timetrap is hard to install, hard to keep updated (because of ruby). Once this
  tools is finished you can get (or build) a binary, put it somewhere, and it
  will just work forever in that machine.
* timetrap is slow (no way around it, because of ruby), some commands take up to
  a second. Tiempo always feels snappy.
* needed major refactor to fix the timezone problem (in a language I'm not
  proficient with). I was aware of this problem and designed tiempo to store
  timestamps in UTC while at the same time being able to work with a database
  made by timetrap without messing up.

### Other advantages

* Columns are always aligned
* Fixed some input inconsistencies
* cli interface is much better (ask -h for any command)
* man page (to do)
* end times are printed with +1d to indicate that the activity ended the next
  day

## How to build

You need [rust](https://rustup.rs), then clone the repo and simply run

    cargo test

to check that everything is working, and then

    cargo build --release

to have a binary at `target/release/t` that you can then move to a
directory in your `PATH` or use it by its absoulte or relative paths.

Run

    t --help

to see the options.

## Special Thanks

To [timetrap](https://github.com/samg/timetrap) for existing. It is the tool I
was looking for and whose design I took as reference, keeping compatibility when
possible.