Re: [O] Dynamically generating todo entries

[Nick Dokos]

Daniel Schoepe <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to dynamically generate a list of TODO entries (specifically,
> a list of notmuch[1] threads that have a "todo" tag) that I'd like to
> see in the TODO agenda, but not in the normal daily agenda (just like a
> ordinary TODO entry without a date). A simple try like
> 
> (defun foo ()
>   "Test function"
>   "TODO foo")
> --
> in something.org:
> %%(foo)
> 
> ends up generating an entry for every day in the weekly/daily agenda,
> but this entry is not recognized as a TODO entry. Is %%(foo) (I don't
> know the actual name of this feature) the wrong mechanism for my goal?
> If so, is there an alternative for accomplishing what I had in mind?
> 

They are generally called (somewhat misleadingly) diary sexps - they are
executed by org-agenda-get-sexps (assuming that they are in some agenda
file) when the agenda is constructed, once for every day displayed: they
do their things and that's that. They are mostly used to remind one of
birthdays, anniversaries etc, hence diary sexps.

> By the way: Is there a resource describing what special variables are
> available to such functions (I only know about date) and how their
> output should look like? I couldn't find anything in the org manual.
> 

What do you mean by special variables? Any variable in the dynamic chain
is fair game: date is available because a caller (org-agenda-list) goes
to the trouble of binding it. Any other variable in this function or in
any parent of org-agenda-get-sexps can be used (unless it's shadowed),
but I'm not sure what use they would be.

The function just has to return a string: the agenda code takes care
of printing the result in the agenda.

> [1] http://notmuchmail.org
> 

Diary sexps is probably the wrong thing to use for what you want: I
don't know how far you want to take it, but iiuc, the easiest thing to
do is write a script (in your favorite language) that generates a file
of entries, say foo.org:

,----
| 
| * notmuch threads
| 
| ** TODO check out this thread [[some link][thread title]]
| ** TODO check out that thread [[some other link][other thread title]]
| ...
`----

Then open it in emacs and include it in your agenda with C-c [

HTH,
Nick