Re: [O] Agenda TODO sorting by date

[Bernt Hansen]

James Harkins <address@hidden> writes:

> At Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:48:42 -0500,
> Bernt Hansen wrote:
>> You could write a custom sorting function that parses out the date from
>> the heading and compares them.  There may be a better way to do this
>> that I'm not aware of for this.
>> 
>> Set this function up in org-agenda-cmp-user-defined and
>> org-agenda-sorting-strategy to get the results you want.
>
> OK, thanks. I was starting to think it would come to that. Kind of
> surprising this isn't offered out of the box.
>
> I think I need a bit more guidance, from you or someone else.
>
>> parses out the date from the heading
>
> Is there already an org function to do this? C-h a searches on the
> following yielded nothing that seemed interesting.
>
> org.*date.*
> org.*timestamp.*
>
>> compares them
>
> I was about to make that more complicated, but actually string
> comparison should be fine for this. No worries there.
>
> I have done rather little with emacs-lisp so... this is uphill for me. Thanks.

I think this works

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

(defun bh/agenda-sort-by-heading-date (a b)
  "Sorting strategy for agenda items.
Late deadlines first, then scheduled, then non-late deadlines"
  (message "Heading a: <%s>" a)
  (message "Heading b: <%s>" b)
  (let* ((date-regexp "\\(\\<[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]\\) ")
        date-a date-b)
    (string-match date-regexp a)
    (setq date-a (match-string 1 a))
    (string-match date-regexp b)
    (setq date-b (match-string 1 b))
    (cond ((string< date-a date-b) -1)
          ((string< date-b date-a) +1)
          ((t nil)))))
  nil)

;;
;; Agenda sorting functions
;;
(setq org-agenda-cmp-user-defined 'bh/agenda-sort-by-heading-date)


(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      (quote (("x" "Tasks" tags-todo ""
               ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Tasks sorted by date")
                (org-agenda-sorting-strategy
                 '(user-defined-up)))))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Then C-c a < x Tag RET 
gives

,----
| Tasks sorted by date
|   scratch:    TODO Third todo in file <2012-03-28 Wed>                     
:Tag:
|   scratch:    TODO Second todo in file <2012-03-29 Thu>                    
:Tag:
|   scratch:    TODO First todo in file <2012-03-30 Fri>                     
:Tag:
|   scratch:    TODO Fourth todo in file <2012-03-31 Sat>                    
:Tag:
`----

HTH,
Bernt