Weekly Report Generator

Installation

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
make

Copy the weekly binary to a directory on your PATH or use make to finish the installation:

make install

How it works

Running weekly without arguments opens an empty buffer in your favorite plain-text editor. Simply write your message, save, and quit. Your input will be appended to a journal corresponding to the week of the year, and the day of the week (~/.weekly/YEAR/WEEK_NUMBER/DAY_NUMBER). When it's time to submit a weekly report to your boss, execute weekly -d. If you were sick or forgot to send it, on Monday morning you can access the previous week with weekly -d 1. If you were on vacation for two weeks use weekly -d 2 to read back your entries from two weeks ago, and so on.

What kind of data does this store?

Records are stored in the format below. Each record contains the date, time, user account name, and system host name.

\x01\x01\x01HEADER\n
\x02\x02\x02MESSAGE\n
\x03\x03\x03\n

The HEADER block uses the format, ## KEY: VALUE, is not size limited. A HEADER ends with three SOT control codes (0x02 ASCII "Start of Text").

Example header block

## date: 01/18/2022
## time: 15:16:14
## author: example
## host:   mycomputer.lan

The MESSAGE block is not size limited and ends with three EOT control codes (0x03 ASCII "End of Text").

Using your favorite editor

If the EDITOR environment variable is not defined, vim will be opened by default on *NIX systems, and notepad on Windows. To change the editor set EDITOR to the desired value:

export EDITOR=nano

Writing (editor)

[example@mycomputer ~]$ weekly

Image of VIM editor with example text

After saving and exiting the editor a success message will be displayed:

Message written to: /home/example/.weekly/2022/3/2

Writing (standard input)

[example@mycomputer ~]$ echo "This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want." | weekly -
Message written to: /home/example/.weekly/2022/3/2

[example@mycomputer ~]$ cat << ENDMSG | weekly -
> This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want.
> ENDMSG
Message written to: /home/example/.weekly/2022/3/2

[example@mycomputer ~]$ weekly -
This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want.
^D
Message written to: /home/example/.weekly/2022/3/2

Reading

You can dump the contents of your weekly journal in a couple different output styles. For anyone interested in managing their own data, weekly can also dump CSV and JSON-compatible dictionaries.

Long style

[example@mycomputer ~]$ weekly -d
## Date: 01/18/2022
## Time: 15:16:14
## User: example
## Host: mycomputer.lan
This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want.

Short style

[example@mycomputer ~]$ weekly -s short -d
01/18/2022 - 15:16:14 - example (mycomputer.lan):
This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want.

CSV style

[example@mycomputer ~]$ weekly -s csv -d
01/18/2022,15:16:14,example,mycomputer.lan,"This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want."

Dictionary style

[example@mycomputer ~]$ weekly -s dict -d
{"date": "01/18/2022",
"time": "15:16:14",
"user": "example",
"host": "mycomputer.lan",
"data": "This is you typing out a message to yourself. It can be whatever you want."}

Usage

usage: weekly [-h] [-V] [-dDys] [-]

Weekly Report Generator v1.0.0

Environment Variables:
WEEKLY_JOURNAL_ROOT          Override journal destination
                               (i.e. /shared/resource/weeklies/$USER)

Options:
--help             -h        Show this usage statement
--dump-relative    -d        Dump records relative to current week
--dump-absolute    -D        Dump records by week value
--dump-year        -y        Set dump-[relative|absolute] year
--dump-style       -s        Set output style:
                               long (default)
                               short
                               csv
                               dict
--version          -V        Show version