10 releases
new 0.3.6 | Sep 20, 2023 |
---|---|
0.3.5 | Sep 19, 2023 |
0.2.0 | Sep 11, 2023 |
0.1.1 | Sep 3, 2023 |
#298 in Command line utilities
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175KB
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SLoC
saturn: a calendar for CLI nerds
NOTE: all docs here chase the main
branch features. If you want docs for
a specific version, go to the README
for the appropriate tag.
If you like the application, come to the issues list and voice your ideas and
concerns. I have personally been using saturn
and sui
for some time
alongside Google Calendar (for more complicated situations) with few issues
outside of things that happen when developing software normally.
Saturn provides you with a CLI interface to calendaring much in the way taskwarrior does with tasks. It also provides you with several methods to query and notify yourself of important appointments. It can act standalone or integrate fully with Google Calendar.
Here is a demo of it in action.
Saturn is also now providing a TUI as a separate program since release v0.2.0;
sui
will present a calendar in a terminal window and allow you to interact
with it in similar ways to saturn
. See below for the list of commands.
Here is what it looks like:

Table of Contents
- Installation
- Entry language
- Querying
- Database & Configuration File
- Leveraging the well features with a periodic scheduler
- Recurring tasks
- Google Calendar Support
- TUI Commands
- Target Platform
- Author
Installation
Install with cargo:
cargo install saturn-cli
Entry language
Entry language is basically:
ENTRY = [ "recur" <duration> ] <date> <AT | SCHEDULED | ALL DAY> ["notify" <duration>] <detail>
AT = at <time>
SCHEDULED = from <time> to <time>
ALL DAY = all day
You trigger it by using saturn entry
:
saturn entry tomorrow at 8pm Take a Shower
This will schedule a shower tomorrow at 8pm with a notification at the time of
the appointment. You can also use saturn e
.
Formats
There are numerous formats that can be used for different times, dates, and durations. Localization is desired but I haven't found a good set of tools for doing it yet.
Dates
Dates can be represented a number of ways:
today
,tomorrow
, andyesterday
are case-insensitive and have their traditional relative meanings.- A day (integer) by itself will assume the current month and year.
- You can also end the day number with traditional suffixes such as
th
,st
,nd
, etc.
- You can also end the day number with traditional suffixes such as
month/day
(e.g. 8/7) will assume the current year.year/month/day
(e.g. 2023/8/7) will represent a full date.- The following characters can be used as date separators:
/
,-
, and.
.
Times
hour:minute:second
represents a full time. You may also use.
for the separators.hour:minute
24-hour time with the following exception: for today's date: when less than 13 represents the time in relationship to the current 12-hour clock. 13 and above are 24-hour time. You can change this behavior withsaturn config set24h-time
.hour:minute[pm|am]
represents the current 12 hour time with appropriate time of day designation.hour[pm|am]
represents the top of the hour in 12 hour time with the appropriate time of day designation.hour
represents the top of the hour in 12 hour time with the current time of day designation.midnight
can be used to refer to00:00
or12:00am
noon
can be used to refer to12:00
or12:00pm
.
Durations
All duration rules take from the fancy-duration crate.
Durations are combined in order of precedence with single character
designations for each unit. Example: 2h15m12s
, is "2 hours, 15 minutes, and
12 seconds".
s
: secondsm
: minutesh
: hoursd
: daysw
: weeksm
(leading position only): monthsy
: years
Querying
NOTE: For Google Calendar, all listings that are unbounded time-wise have a
current maximum bound of 30 days back, plus 30 days ahead. This is to ensure
we grab all the results if possible in a single fetch, as well as not destroy
your network each time you want to query this information for old or large
calendars. saturn
is not currently capable of backing up your Google Calendar.
Listing
saturn list [--all]
Will list the database for today, or if --all
is passed, will list the entire
db. Note that saturn today
and saturn t
, and saturn l
are synonyms for
saturn list
.
saturn now [--well=<duration>]
Will list the items that need to be addressed immediately. To configure how
much of a time to wrap around what "now" means, use the --well
option.
Durations are specified in
fancy-duration format.
saturn n
is an alias for saturn now
.
Notifying
saturn notify [--well=<duration>] [--timeout=<duration>]
Will display a notification to the screen for every item that must be addressed
immediately. --well
is similar to now
's functionality, and --timeout
configures how long to keep the notification up on the screen.
This is what a notification looks like in dunst
, which the notification
system for i3
. GNOME, KDE, MacOS, etc will look different, but have the
same text.

Editing
saturn edit [-r] <id>
Will run $EDITOR
and fill it with a YAML file. When this file is edited, it
will change the database and the remote side, if necessary. Specify -r
for
recurring task IDs.
Deletion and Mutation
saturn delete <ids...>
Will delete a calendar record by ID, which is listed with the listing tools.
Pass -r
to delete a recurring task.
saturn complete <id>
Will mark a task as "completed". Completed tasks get a visual notification and
are automatically excluded from listing without the --all
flag.
Does not work with Google Calendar.
Database & Configuration File
Saturn keeps a CBOR database in ~/.saturn.db
. Locking is flock(2), and quite
primitive. Suggestions and patches welcome.
The configuration file is only required in limited scenarios (such as remote
calendar support) and exists in ~/.saturn.conf
. It is a plain YAML file, but
is typically manipulated by saturn config
commands, which may replace any
comments or other manipulations you previously did to the file by hand.
Leveraging the well features with a periodic scheduler
The --well
options take a duration. This duration is intended to roughly
match the frequency at which you run the program, so that there is little to no
overlap between event firings. This flag is provided for saturn now
and
saturn notify
.
Notifications (specified by a notify
entry stanza) are only fired once in any
event. Events, on the other hand, are shown every time they fall into the
window, which is the current time, +/- the --well
duration.
I hope this clears things up; I was trying to figure out a good way to run this
in cron
etc without spamming myself with notifications for a long period of
time.
Here's an example: we run a loop of saturn notify
with a well of two minutes,
and then we sleep for a minute. This allows notify to catch the alert only
once, passing it up by the next time it runs.
while true
do
saturn notify --well 2m
sleep 60
done
Recurring tasks
Recurring tasks start their entry with the "recur" keyword and a duration.
Every time the program is run and touches the database, it will look to add
recurring tasks. Recurring tasks are based off the last task that was saved,
and every recurrence up to the current point will be added in the absence of
them. In the Unix file implementation, (not Google Calendar, which is
responsible for creating its own recurring events) until they are added, they
will not have IDs nor can they be manipulated. Commands like now
and notify
which only perform read operations also adjust this data, so they can fire
notifications properly for new tasks.
Google Calendar Support
Google Calendar support is working, with OAuth credentials being setup properly and limited control of the calendar is possible within the realm of what saturn currently supports. More is anticipated to be built atop this framework. Do not be surprised if functionality is confusing or missing. Please put in issues with your concerns, thanks!
sui
also works beautifully with Google Calendar, providing a compelling, if
primitive replacement for the web UI.
To use saturn
with Google Calendar, you must create a Google Cloud account
and assign an OAuth application to it. One is not provided automatically by
using saturn
to eliminate concerns of data provenance.
To do this, follow these
steps, which go into
how to set up an application for development. Be sure to setup any accounts you
want to use as "Test Users", and ensure that
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar
is in your list of allowed scopes.
Once you have the "Client ID" and "Client Secret", run this command:
saturn config set-client <client id> <client secret>
saturn config get-token
saturn config db-type google
The get-token
command will have you access a URL in your browser and make you
login to the google account you wish to use, which must be listed in your
"testing users" in the OAuth setup above. As a final step, it will call back
into a web service the application starts, which will feed it the token.
Your token will expire if you do not use the tool regularly. Stuffing saturn notify
in cron will alleviate this a bit. To get a new key, use saturn config get-token
and follow the prompts. No other settings need to change.
Setting the db-type will change the source of data. If you were using a local
database and want to go back to it, saturn config db-type unixfile
.
Notifications setup in Google Calendar are not honored yet. This will be resolved soon!
Other things we want to do that aren't here yet:
- Fields (URLs, Locations, etc)
- Attendees
TUI Commands
The TUI accepts several commands at the prompt; this command-set will grow with time. To interact with it, just type and hit enter to send a command.
e
orentry
: Process an entry insaturn entry
format.d
ordelete
: Delete all the IDs provided (separate them with spaces).d recur
ordelete recur
to delete recurring items.show today
will show today's calendar items, whereshow all
will show the entire calendar (the default).show recur
will show you recurring tasks.show <id>
will show you more information about that particular task. Useshow recur <id>
to show a recurring id.edit <id>
will raise an editor to edit your item's properties.edit recur <id>
will edit a recurring item.quit
will exit the program.
Target Platform
Due to flock(2) use, which to the best of my knowledge is the only reason, Windows probably does not work properly. Patches welcome if there are windows users who'd like to use it.
Author
Erik Hollensbe git@hollensbe.org
Dependencies
~20–64MB
~1M SLoC