Tasks n' Times

A CLI tool to keep track of how long certain Tasks have taken

• Goal of the Project
• installation
• Usage
  • The Commandline interface
    • Switching to another task.
    • Getting a list of Tasks and how much time was spend in them
    • Getting a full list of Times
    • Filtering the times
  • Shell - Autocompletion:
• The Web interface
• A word on Timers
• Probabbly asked Questions
• Build it yourself

Goal of the Project

I had a lot of "Project-Hopping" to do lately, and can barely keep track of what toke how long. This tool is meant to make things easier by documenting when and how long certain Tasks have been executed.

installation

• grab one of the binaries from the Releases - Section
• rename it to tnt (for Linux/Unix/Mac) or tnt.exe (for Windows)
• put it into a directory that is listed in your $PATH or %PATH%
• setup the Autocompletion as described further down in Autocompletion Done

Alternatively, you can run the tnt / tnt.exe from any directory you like. Having it in your $PATH/%PATH% just makes it possible to call it from other directories.

Should your system not be covered by the precompiled binaries, please use the build guide further down Build it yourself

Likewise, this README also covers features not yet present in the Releases - Section. When using a pre-build release, always refere to the README.md of the release
(in v1.3.1 or smaller, this must be extracted from the Source Code.zip / Source Code.tar.gz file)

Usage

Note

Despite this being a CLI-Tool, there is also a Web interface, if the CLI is not your cup of tea. Just look further down in this README

The Commandline interface

This application was primarily designed ot be used from the command line first.

Easily usable via Windows Powershell/CMD or Unix Bash, ZSH, etc.

# first create some Tasks 
tnt tasks add "important project nr 1"
tnt tasks add "very important project"
tnt tasks add "some side project"
tnt tasks add "learning new stuff"
   
# you can see what task you created via
tnt tasks ls

# To remove a task and all its Recorded Times use
tnt tasks rm "some side project";

to start tracking times, use:

tnt s "important project nr 1"

#or
tnt start "important project nr 1"

#or
tnt switch "important project nr 1"

#these 3 are aliasses for the the same function

now the timer for "important project nr 1" is running until you either start another timer via s, start or switch

or, if you want to stop the timers (for example because your shift is over) call:

tnt stop

Switching to another task.

switching tasks is as easy as calling

tnt s "what ever is your new task"

Should another timer be running currently, it will be stopped and a new timer for the new task is started.

Getting a list of Tasks and how much time was spend in them

just run.

tnt times sum 

and you'll get a list of all Tasks and how much time you've spend with them in total.

Getting a full list of Times

To find out, when you did what, you can use the

tnt times ls

command. The most current started timer is on top. The oldest timer is on the bottom.

Filtering the times

both of the tnt times commands can take a -t or --task flag, to filter the results for a given Task. The value for this flag is the Taskname given during tnt task add or used during tnt s | start | switch.

Shell - Autocompletion:

This tool was build with auto completion im mind, as Task names can become quite long. Autocompletion make switching between Tasks/Timers very fritctionless.

on bash you can activate the autocomletion by putting the following in your .bashrc.

source <(tnt completion bash)

For ZSH put this into your .zshrc

source <(tnt completion zsh)

Check the following command for more autocompletion options

tnt completion 

The Web interface

don't worry, despite it saying "Web", no data will ever leave your computer. Instead your default browser is just used as an input and output.

To use Tasks 'n Times via the Web-Interface, call the following command from the command line.

tnt serve

then open the URL it shows you.

On Mac and Linux, you can add the --open or -o flag to automatically open your standard browser at the location.

Note

-o and --open are not yet supported on Windows

By default it opens on Port 7353. Should that port not be available or allowed, you can define another one via the -p or --port flag.

tnt serve --port 8088

You can also combine the --open and --port flags via their short form.

tnt serve -op 8088

From their, you are presented with this interface here. While not pretty, it works for now.

The Reload Tasks - Button at the top can be used in case you added new Tasks via the command line, while the server was running. (But a simple F5 Page-Refresh does the job too.)

You can add a new Task via the " + " Button in the top right cornor.

It opens the Input Form, where you can add your new Task.

After that, is your Task-List.

The Cross-button removes a Task and all its recorded times from the List.
The Play-button starts a new Timer for that Task.
Shows the total time you spend in that task.

Note

Starting a new Timer will automatically finish the previous running Timer.

Below that, you have the Times section.

You can click on a Tasks name to filter the times for that Task.

stops what ever timer is crently running.
Shows the times for all Tasks
Shows the Summed times per Task for all Tasks.
As with the Tasks, the Cross button next to a Time, removes that time.

A word on Timers

This applications job is to serve as stopwatch like timer. However, the times are recorded passively. That means, even if you turn your computer off, the timer will still be running, until it is stopped.

Times are taken after a Task was stopped, by substracting the end time from the start time. That way, you don't need to have the App open at all times, just when you need to interact with it.

Probabbly asked Questions

Q: Where does tnt store it's persistent Data?

All it's data is stored in the $HOME/.local/share/tnt directory. On Windows that should be %USERPROFILE%\.local\share\tnt.

you can also call tnt with the --db "path/to/yourdatabase.db" flag, to store the data in a file in the path/to/yourdatabase.db file instead.

Q: Will the Web-Interface track my data or install anything ?

No

Build it yourself

• Install GO (https://go.dev/doc/install)
• Make sure make is installed on your system
• clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/Rocco-Gossmann/tnt.git

• Enter the directory

cd tnt

• Run

make go.sum

• Build the project

make tnt #to build für your specific system
# or 
make all #to build all other versions

Should you want to change anything regarding the Web-Interface, please make sure Tailwind-CLI is installed on your system. Then run

make css && make