planner-tasks-overview.el patch + config to send weekly undone task reports in e-mail (was Re: [emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: migrating planner-tasks-overview.el to planner-muse)

[Janne Hellsten]

Hi Seth,

> You might want something like:
>
> ;; untested!
> (lambda (x) (if muse-file-extension
>                 (concat x "." muse-file-extension)
>               x))

Yep, it seemed to work so I changed to use that one.

> > I have my own fork of planner-tasks-overview and can live with this
> > limitations.  My own fork contains changes that enable plain text
> > output of tasks summaries
> > -- I e-mail weekly tasks summaries to myself every morning.
>
> That sounds useful, would you mind posting what you have to generate
> plain text task summaries?

Yes, sure thing.  I've attached a patch to planner-tasks-overview.el
that needs to be applied before using my configs below.  I hope the
patch works, I find it really difficult to use Arch being used to
Darcs/Perforce/SVN myself..  The patch should not change
planner-tasks-overview functionality, it is just a small refactoring
to allow for changing the output format.

As for configuring Emacs to send task summaries in e-mail..  Here goes.

I've split the configuration into two parts: first one is the required
elisp configuration to format and send e-mails and the second part is
a shell script that I use with cron to actually launch emacs to send
e-mail every morning.  The shell script most probably won't work out
of the box.  If you want to try it out, the critical part is to modify
the load-path correctly for your setup.  It really doesn't require wl
(wanderlust), it's just that my config for wl also sets up paths
properly for planner.

<clip>
;; planner-tasks-overview comes from my own patched version of
;; planner-tasks-overview.el.
(require 'planner-tasks-overview)
(defvar nurpa-mail-temp-buffer "*nurpa tasks mail template*")

(require 'sendmail)
(setq send-mail-function 'sendmail-send-it)

(defun janne/planner-tasks-overview-sort (field)
  "Sort tasks first by date and then by priority."
  (sort planner-tasks-overview-data
        (lambda (a b)
          (let ((date-a (elt a 2))
                (date-b (elt b 2))
                (pri-a (elt a 0))
                (pri-b (elt b 0)))
            (if (equal date-a date-b)
                (string< pri-a pri-b)
              (string< date-a date-b))))))

(defun janne/planner-tasks-overview-insert-it ()
  "Insert the textual representation for `planner-tasks-overview-data'."
  (let ((prev-date nil))
    (mapcar
     (lambda (item)
       (let ((cur-date (elt item 2))
             (text
              (format "- %s [%s/%s %s]\n"
                      (elt item 4)
                      (if (elt item 3) (elt item 3) "")
                      (elt item 0) (elt item 1))))
         (if (not (equal prev-date cur-date))
             (progn
               (insert (format "\n%s\n----------\n\n" cur-date))
               (setq prev-date cur-date)))
         (if (member (elt item 1) '("_" "o" ">" "P"))
             (insert text))))
     (janne/planner-tasks-overview-sort planner-tasks-overview-data))))

(custom-set-variables
 '(planner-tasks-overview-format-tasks-function
   'janne/planner-tasks-overview-insert-it))

(defvar nurpa-tasks-email-to-address "address@hidden")
(defvar nurpa-tasks-email-from-address nurpa-tasks-email-to-address)

(defun nurpa-tasks-email ()
  (interactive)
  ;; NOTE: we need to go into "plan" first, otherwise old tasks are
  ;; not carried over from previous day to today's page and the sent
  ;; e-mail will miss some tasks.
  (plan)
  ;; Go into tasks overview
  (planner-tasks-overview (planner-expand-name "+0") (planner-expand-name "+7"))
  (switch-to-buffer "*planner tasks overview*")
  (copy-to-buffer nurpa-mail-temp-buffer 1 (point-max))
  ;; Format it as a mail:
  (switch-to-buffer nurpa-mail-temp-buffer)
  (goto-char 1)
  (insert (format "From: %s\n" nurpa-tasks-email-from-address))
  (insert (format "To: %s\n" nurpa-tasks-email-to-address))
  (insert "Subject: NurpaOps: Tasks for the next 7 days\n")
  (insert "--text follows this line--\n")
  (funcall send-mail-function))
</clip>

And here's an example shell script for launching emacs to send tasks
summaries.  To be used with cron.

<clip>
#!/bin/sh
emacs --batch --eval "(progn (load-file \"~/.emacs\") (require 'wl)
(load-file \"~/.wl\") (nurpa-tasks-email))"
</clip>

Best regards,
Janne

planner-tasks-overview.el.patch
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