Using a script to streamline note management for this site

March 09, 2025

To make it easier to add or update stuff on this website, it would be nice to have a script which could automate the boring stuff like writing the YAML frontmatter.

I could also ensure that there are no mistakes in the frontmatter, because the script would always get it right.

Scenarios

Creating a new page

I want to add a new page to my site. The page should have tags, a timestamp (to record when the page was created), and a 'friendly' title. A slug should also be generated.

The result should give me something like what I've got on this page:

title: Using a script to streamline note management for this site
slug: using-a-script-to-streamline-note-management-for-this-site
date: 2025-03-09T13:00:30+00:00
taxonomies:
  tags:
    - bash
    - meta

To make things even easier, the script should be able to let me interactively walk through some directories so that I can choose a file to put my new page next to.

The file should then be opened in VSCodium, in my usual workspace.

Editing an existing page

I want to be shown an interactive file picker, which I can select a file from, and have the file opened in my preferred editor.

In either case, if my workspace is already open, we should re-use the existing workspace, and just open the file inside of it. Luckily VSCode (and therefore VSCodium) makes this pretty easy with the --goto arg.

Implementation

I ended up writing the script using bash and gum.

The script is called nn. The name doesn't mean anything, it's just something I can type quickly.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# shellcheck source=home/private_dot_local/bin/executable_bash_common
source "${HOME_ORIGINAL:-$HOME}"/.local/bin/bash_common

if [[ -z "${XDG_DATA_HOME}" ]]; then
    die "XDG_DATA_HOME must be set"
fi

if [[ -z "${NN_DIR}" ]]; then
    die "NN_DIR must be set. This should point to the zola site root dir (NOT the contents/ dir)"
else
    ensure_directory "${NN_DIR}"
    info "NN_DIR is $NN_DIR"
fi

please_install gum
please_install dirname
please_install tr
please_install sed

# DESC: open the requested file inside the vscodium workspace
# ARGS: $1 = the file to open (ensure that this is a file!)
_open() {
    local -r VSCODIUM="$XDG_DATA_HOME/flatpak/exports/bin/com.vscodium.codium"
    "$VSCODIUM" "$NN_DIR" --goto "$1"
}

new_file() {
    local SELECTED
    SELECTED="$(gum file --header "Where should your new page go?" --directory "$NN_DIR"/content/)"
    [ -f "$SELECTED" ] && SELECTED=$(dirname "$SELECTED")

    local -r TITLE="$(gum input --placeholder="Page title")"
    [ -z "$TITLE" ] && die "You must provide a page title"
    local -r TAGS="$(gum input --placeholder="Which tags should be added to this page? (comma-separated)")"
    [ -z "$TAGS" ] && die "You must provide tags"

    local -r DATE="$(date --iso-8601=seconds)"
    local -r SLUG="$(echo "$TITLE" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sed -E 's/[^a-z0-9]+/-/g; s/^-|-$//g')"
    local -r FILE="$SELECTED/$SLUG.md"

    cat <<EOF > "$FILE"
---
title: $TITLE
slug: $SLUG
date: $DATE
taxonomies:
  tags:
EOF

    # Append each tag to the file with a four space indent
    IFS=',' read -ra TAG_ARRAY <<< "$TAGS"
    for TAG in "${TAG_ARRAY[@]}"; do
        echo "    - $TAG" >> "$FILE"
    done

    # Close the YAML frontmatter
    echo "---" >> "$FILE"
    _open "$FILE"
}

edit_file() {
    _open "$(gum file --header "Select a page to edit" --all --file "$NN_DIR"/content/)"
}

main() {
    local -r NEW_FILE="New file"
    local -r EDIT_FILE="Edit existing file"
    local -r CHOICE="$(gum choose "$NEW_FILE" "$EDIT_FILE" --header="What would you like to do?")"

    case $CHOICE in
        "$NEW_FILE")
            new_file
            ;;
        "$EDIT_FILE")
            edit_file
            ;;
        *)
            :
            ;;
    esac
}

main

Source: nn.