Boostnote CLI

Very simple CLI program to search and list Boostnote notes.

Installation

Clone

git clone https://github.com/sschmeier/boostnote-cli.git 

Change mode

cd boostnote-cli
chmod +x bn.py

Make symbolic link

If you want to use bn.py everywhere you have two options.

1. Copy the bn.py to a directory on your $PATH, e.g. ~/bin
2. Make a symbolic link in a directory on your $PATH, e.g. ~/bin (PREFERRED)

# 1.
cp /PATH/TO/bn.py ~/bin

# 2.
cd ~/bin
ln -s /PATH/TO/bn.py bn

The second options has the advantage that you can update the bn.py easily without any new installs:

cd /PATH/TO/boostnote-cli
git pull

Specify where to find your notes

The default path for the tool to look for notes is in ~/Dropbox/Apps/Boostnote/notes. If you wish to change this path or add other paths where the tools should look, you need to use the .bn config-file. Copy the .bn config-file to your home directory. In this file you can specify a list of paths, where the tools will look for note-files. In case the default path (~/Dropbox/Apps/Boostnote/notes) is sufficient for your use case, there is no need to use the .bn config-file.

Usage

Five subcommands are currently available:

• help
• list (ls)
• listtags (lst)
• view (v)
• search (s)

bn help

$ bn help
usage: bn [-h] [--version] [-d PATH] {help,v,s,ls,lst} ...

Simple command-line interface to Boostnote.

positional arguments:
  {help,v,s,ls,lst}
    help               Show help
    v                  View notes
    s                  Search for notes
    ls                 List notes
    lst                List tags

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  --version            show program's version number and exit
  -d PATH, --dir PATH  Boostnote notes dir. [default:
                       "~/Dropbox/Apps/Boostnote/notes"]

bn ls

bn ls will list by default the last ten updated notes. You can change the behavior by using arguments to the bn ls command:

• -c: List according to creation date
• -a: List all notes not only last ten

bn lst

bn lst will list by default the ten most frequent tags from your notes. You can change the behavior by using arguments to the bn lst command:

• -a: List all notes not only ten most frequent ones
• -s: List alphabetically, which will also print all tags
• -n: List notes belonging to the tags

bn v

bn v can be used to look at notes matching a string or match a regular expression in the title. If more then one note matches the string/regexp, all will be printed.

bn s

bn s is used to search for notes that contain a string or match a regular expression in the title, content, or tags. You can change the behavior by using arguments to the bn lst command:

• -f, --fulltext: Search in fulltext instead
• -p, --print: Print match in fulltext search
• -t, --tags: Search in tags instead

Specifically the use of regular expressions in combination with -pf can facilitate a quick look at the lines a match occurred in per note, for example:

# Print all notes and complete lines where the word data was found:
$ bn s -pf ".*data.*"