Comments on: Hacking a Google Calendar CLI Tool

By: GrouchyGaijin

GrouchyGaijin — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:43:44 +0000

Thanks man,
This is exactly what I set out to do when I found your post.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:19:17 +0000

travc: I thought about that, but is beyond me. You should do it! Anyway, what you are suggesting is actually much preferable to a bash script, because, at least I’d argue, these small changes would enhance but not bloat the program. Just bringing existing functionality in line with existing usage. Otherwise, a bash (or other) script might be better because of the one well made tool per job thingie. But really, my script is a wrapper, not a tool.

Regarding OSX, etc.: I’ll note that Dave Taylor now develops and tests on his Mac for his column in Linux Journal. Which makes me feel a little funny but I suppose it’s OK.

By: travc

travc — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:50:31 +0000

Nemo,
You may already know this, but to get pedantic…
OSX is based on BSD, so a lot of the standard utilities are bit different. Generally BSD is leaner than GNU stuff, so the GNU tools have extra options but almost always handles all the BSD options.

Anyway, throwing in “OSX” or “BSD” into web-searches for documentation can be useful. I frequently write stuff on my desktop (Ubuntu) and get annoyed by it not working on my laptop (OSX).

By: travc

travc — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:41:53 +0000

bash scripting is very very useful and all…

But you could just modify the actual gcalcli program (it’s in python).

Line 227 in version 1.4 is:
agendaLength = 5

I assume that is the default value you want to be different.

If you wanted to be cool about it, you could change the way it parses the “end” argument for the “agenda” option. I’d suggest something simple like a string starting with ‘+’ is parsed as a number of days from the start value. While you’re at it, you could have it accept unix time for start and/or end… maybe if the string is prefixed with ‘@’, or again getting cool, if the string is just an integer value without any extra stuff.

Oh, and share the patch of course 😉

By: Nemo

Nemo — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:58:26 +0000

I just experimented. I knew that GNU date had some powerful parsing abilities, but I didn’t and still don’t know exactly what it will take. The first few things I tried, like “two weeks from now”, didn’t work. But the GNU stuff often saves its best documentation for the “info” system, so maybe it’s there?

This only works with GNU date, not e.g. the “date” that comes with OS X.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:56:19 +0000

I meant 14 days.

By: Garry Knight

Garry Knight — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:51:52 +0000

“what if you wanted ten days starting on December 20th? Then, the month goes back to 1, and the year is incremented.” How so? Surely those days would be the 20th thru 29th.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:52:29 +0000

RSG, sorry, no. man date and date –help do not indicate the required information used by Nemo.

By: RSG

RSG — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 05:15:51 +0000

The date string codes can be accessed by “date –help”.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 03:50:02 +0000

Brilliant! I knew someone would solve this more easily than I had. It would have to be:

date -d “+2 weeks” +%D

(we need 11/02/10 for the format)

So, in the above, forget that math and substitute the above, or something like “+10 days” or whatever.

Just out of curiosity, where did you find documentation of the date STRING codes? (Not in the man file. Maybe I should have looked in the info?)