Customization

prefs.json is designed to make customization of The Daily Report flexible and rich.

In the abstract, The Daily Report defines functions that return strings of potentially interesting content. The Daily Report then interpolates these functions into various [format strings][fmt-strings], which are very similar in syntax to Python’s built-in f-string literals but slightly more powerful, supporting the execution of arbitrary code and escapes, rather than just single expressions. The formatting is done with my extendedformatter module.

All format strings can either be a single string key or an array of strings, which are then joined with newlines (this makes long format sequences much more readable).

The primary format string is prefs.format (prefs referring to prefs.json, with .format referring to the format key; Javascript-syntax is used here for in favor of Python’s, because prefs['format'] is unnecessarily verbose).

All format strings have access to the global format variables, but many have access to their own, sometimes nested format variables.

For example, the format of {sun}’s output is defined in prefs.weather.sun_format, which has access to {sunrise} (the sunrise time), {daylight} (the length of the day), and {sunset} (the sunset time). From there, {sunrise} is defined by prefs.weather.sunrise_format. It’s a little bit silly and certainly rather verbose but it allows you to truly make The Daily Report your own.

All format variables are functions and must be called with parenthesis, though they may be written without them in the documentation for brevity; this means that format functions you don’t call aren’t evaluated, saving you time / bandwidth / processing power. Additionally, API calls are cached when possible, saving requests.

All function parameters are optional, and may be omitted. However, sometimes it is not sensible to do so; I assume you’ll want twitter to print the tweets of someone who’s not @dril, for example. Options are written unbracketed, as normal arguments, but are, again, optional.

Okay, that’s a bit of a lie; a few functions, like center(), require an argument; usually, this will be clear. If this is the case, optional arguments are written in brackets.

Global Format Functions

These format variables are available in all format strings, whereas local format variables are only available in some; sun can be used in any format string, but sunrise can only be used in prefs.weather.sun.format.

`hrule`

Definition: misc.hrule.

Description: A horizontal rule formed by repeating prefs.horiz prefs.width times. Multiple consecutive {hrule}s and {thinhrule}s are compressed into a single {hrule} in final output.

Example output:

================================

`thinhrule`

Definition: misc.thinhrule.

Description: A thinner horizontal rule, using prefs.horiz_light instead of prefs.horiz for the fill character. Multiple {thinhrule}s are condensed into a single {thinhrule} in final output.

Example output:

--------------------------------

`center(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])`

Definition: misc.center

Description: Centers its input; like str.center(width, fill_char) but the width parameter is optional, defaulting to prefs.width.

Example output: repr(center(isodate()))

'           2017-08-04           '

(repr included to show the quote boundaries.)

`right(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])`

Definition: misc.right

Alias: left_pad

Description: Right-aligns its input; like str.rjust(width, fill_char) but the width parameter is optional, defaulting to prefs.width.

`align(left='', center='', right='', width=prefs.width, fillchar=' ')`

Definition: misc.align

Description: A combination of right and center; takes three positional arguments left, center, and right or any number of keyword arguments and justifies the output, left-aligning left, centering center, and right-aligning right (to width prefs.width by default or any arbitrary width with the width keyword-argument).

All arguments are optional but using one without the others is a bit self-defeating.

Example output: align('left', 'center', 'right')

left         center        right

`today`

Definition: dates.today_date(day=0)

Description: Today’s date, human-style. From prefs.dates.today_format, as a [strftime escape][strftime]. day argument specifies an offset, to get the date for tomorrow or yesterday or a week from now.

Example output: today is sunday, july 30

`iso_date`

Definition: dates.iso_date

Description: [ISO 8601][iso8601]-compliant date.

Example output: 2017-07-30

`now_hm(fillchar='')`

Definition: dates.now_hm

Description: Outputs the current time in hours/minutes. If prefs.dates.hours is 24, now_hm will output 24-hour times. Note that output can always be a constant width with the fillchar kwarg set to ' ', for easy alignment.

Example output: 4:43PM

`calendar`

Definition: dates.events(day=0)

Description: Outputs two sections, separated by a thinhrule. The first is all day events, formatted with prefs.dates.all_day in a left-column and post-fixed with (day x of y) with x being the current day in the event and y being the event’s duration in days.

The second section is the current day’s events, formatted with their time (hours and minutes) in the left column.

An optional day parameter offsets the output by a given number of days; pass day=1 to get tomorrow’s schedule, and day=2 for the day after tomorrow’s schedule, etc.

Example output:

all day ║ summer break (day 43
        ║ of 60)
────────────────────────────────
12:00PM ║ work at citysburg
 6:00PM ║ cook egg drop soup
        ║ with friends

`countdown`

Definition: dates.today_countdowns

Description: A list of countdowns, calculated as the days until the next prefs.calendar.max_countdowns in the calendars that match prefs.calendar.countdown_pat.

Example output:

  5 ║ visit jay (2017-08-04)
 28 ║ move in day (2017-08-27)
148 ║ christmas (2017-12-25)
274 ║ birthday (2018-04-30)

`todo`

Definition: dates.today_todos

Description: A list of todos, generated from today’s events in the calendars that match prefs.calendar.todo_pat.

Example output:

[] get toothpaste

`work`

Definition: dates.today_work

Description: Like calendar but for work shifts, from a work calendar, to let you separate the output.

Example output:

`twitter(handle='dril')`

Definition: twtr.last

Description: The last status from the given Twitter user

Example output: twitter('tiny_star_field')

@tiny_star_field: * 　 　　 ˚
✵        ·   .         · .  ·
     ˚  ˚  · ✦       ✵        ·
⋆  .  ·
67 likes, 46 rts
2017-08-04 10:29:02 PM

(Perhaps not the best example, because the output is formatted [i.e. the original tweet’s linebreaks are ignored] so the neat grid that @tiny_star_field generates is lost... TODO: Keep original line-breaks by doubling them)

`maze`

Definition: maze.gen(w=prefs.width, h=prefs.maze.height)

Description: Generates a tiny maze of width w and height h!

Example output:

S─┬───┬─────┬───┬─────┬───────┐
│ ╰─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ ╭─┐ └─╮ ──╮ │
├─┐ │ ┌─┤ ╰───┤ │ │ ╰── ├───┘ │
│ │ │ │ └─┬── ├───┤ ┌───╯ ──╮ │
│ ──┴───╮ │ ╭─┘ │ │ │ ──┬── │ │
├───┬── │ │ │ ┌─╯ │ ├── │ ──┴─┤
├── │ ╭─┴─┴─┐ │ ╭─┤ └─╮ ╰───╮ │
│ ──╯ │ ┌── └─┘ │ ╰── └─────┘ │
└───────┴───────┴─────────────E

`forecast`

Definition: weather.today_forecast(day=0)

Description: Today’s forecast, as defined by prefs.weather.forecast_format. Accepts an arbitrary day-offset; a builtin tmrw_forecast exists but not for further days; day-after-tomorrow forecasts can be shown with forecast(2)

Example output: 60-82°F, 10%p

`tmrw_forecast`

Definition: weather.tomorrow_forecast

Description: Identical to forecast but for tomorrow instead of the current day.

`conditions`

Definition: weather.conditions(day=0)

Description: Today’s conditions.

Example output: Chance of thunderstorms

`tmrw_conditions`

Definition: weather.tomorrow_conditions

Description: See above. Wrapper around weather.conditions(day=1)

Example output: Clear

`weather_graph`

Definition: weather.graph

Description: Prints a graph of the 24-hour forecast. × marks (or whatever’s in prefs.weather.chars.temp) denote temperatures, with the axis marks printed on the left. · marks denote precipitation chances, with axis marks printed on the right. ¤ marks indicate that the precipitation chance and temperature occupies the same space for that time. Hours are printed at the bottom, at multiples of 3, and vertical bars are printed at noon / midnight.

Example output:

81║¤·······       │          ║15
78║ ×××           │  ×××××   ║12
75║   │××         │ ×     ×  ║ 9
73║   │  ××¤···   ××       × ║ 6
70║   │     ×× ¤¤×│         ¤║ 3
68║   │       ×  ··········· ║ 0
°F×9  12 3  6  9  12 3  6  9 ·%p

`sun`

Definition: weather.suntimes

Description: Outputs sun information, formatted according to prefs.weather.sun.format.

Example output:

6:08AM ↑      14:14     8:22PM ↓

`moon`

Definition: weather.moon

Description: Shows moon phase and illumination percent, formatted according to prefs.weather.moon.format.

Example output:

     ○ first quarter @ 53%

`headlines(url=news.reuters('worldnews'), amount=3, style=prefs.news.format)`

Definition: news.headlines

Alias: rss

Description: 3 (or more, or less) headlines from the RSS feed of your choice. Just a generic RSS parser, so feel free to plug whatever you'd like into it!

Local Format Variables

`forecast`

variable	description	example
`low`	the lower predicted temperature for the day.	24
`high`	the upper predicted temperature for the day.	68
`conds`	the predicted conditions for the day.	clear
`summary`	(I forget exactly what this looks like, stuff it in and find out!)
`day_data`	raw data
`txt_data`	raw data

`moon`

variable	description	example
`phase`	the moon’s phase	Waxing gibbous
`percent`	the moon’s illumination percentage	55
`graphic`	`prefs.moon.dark_graphic` if `percentage` < 50, `prefs.moon.bright_graphic` otherwise	○

`sun`

variable	description	example
`sunrise`	sunrise time	5:28AM
`sunset`	sunset time	8:50PM
`daylight`	daylight time, in hours and minutes	14:28

`twitter`

variable	description	example
`date`	datetime of tweet
`pretty_format`	format in `prefs.twitter.pretty_format`
everything else in a `tweet.AsDict()`

`stocks`

Data comes from Yahoo Finance, so it's extensive! All variables are listed below, but some useful ones are

variable	description	example
`Symbol`	ticker symbol	AAPL
`PercentChange`		+2.06%
`LastTradePriceOnly`		2844.01

AfterHoursChangeRealtime, AnnualizedGain, Ask, AskRealtime, AverageDailyVolume, Bid, BidRealtime, BookValue, Change, ChangeFromFiftydayMovingAverage, ChangeFromTwoHundreddayMovingAverage, ChangeFromYearHigh, ChangeFromYearLow, ChangePercentRealtime, ChangeRealtime, Change_PercentChange, ChangeinPercent, Commission, Currency, DaysHigh, DaysLow, DaysRange, DaysRangeRealtime, DaysValueChange, DaysValueChangeRealtime, DividendPayDate, DividendShare, DividendYield, EBITDA, EPSEstimateCurrentYear, EPSEstimateNextQuarter, EPSEstimateNextYear, EarningsShare, ErrorIndicationreturnedforsymbolchangedinvalid, ExDividendDate, FiftydayMovingAverage, HighLimit, HoldingsGain, HoldingsGainPercent, HoldingsGainPercentRealtime, HoldingsGainRealtime, HoldingsValue, HoldingsValueRealtime, LastTradeDate, LastTradePriceOnly, LastTradeRealtimeWithTime, LastTradeTime, LastTradeWithTime, LowLimit, MarketCapRealtime, MarketCapitalization, MoreInfo, Name, Notes, OneyrTargetPrice, Open, OrderBookRealtime, PEGRatio, PERatio, PERatioRealtime, PercebtChangeFromYearHigh, PercentChange, PercentChangeFromFiftydayMovingAverage, PercentChangeFromTwoHundreddayMovingAverage, PercentChangeFromYearLow, PreviousClose, PriceBook, PriceEPSEstimateCurrentYear, PriceEPSEstimateNextYear, PricePaid, PriceSales, SharesOwned, ShortRatio, StockExchange, Symbol, TickerTrend, TradeDate, TwoHundreddayMovingAverage, Volume, YearHigh, YearLow, YearRange, symbol

`headlines`

In addition to title, description, and url, standard for the RSS format, a short_url is available for goo.gl URLs, and date is available as a datetime object (so use it with something like format(date, '%Y-%m-%d %I:%M:%S%p')).

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customization.md

customization.md

Table of Contents

Customization

Global Format Functions

`hrule`

`thinhrule`

`center(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])`

`right(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])`

`align(left='', center='', right='', width=prefs.width, fillchar=' ')`

`today`

`iso_date`

`now_hm(fillchar='')`

`calendar`

`countdown`

`todo`

`work`

`twitter(handle='dril')`

`maze`

`forecast`

`tmrw_forecast`

`conditions`

`tmrw_conditions`

`weather_graph`

`sun`

`moon`

`headlines(url=news.reuters('worldnews'), amount=3, style=prefs.news.format)`

Local Format Variables

`forecast`

`moon`

`sun`

`twitter`

`stocks`

`headlines`

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customization.md

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Table of Contents

Customization

Global Format Functions

hrule

thinhrule

center(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])

right(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])

align(left='', center='', right='', width=prefs.width, fillchar=' ')

today

iso_date

now_hm(fillchar='')

calendar

countdown

todo

work

twitter(handle='dril')

maze

forecast

tmrw_forecast

conditions

tmrw_conditions

weather_graph

sun

moon

headlines(url=news.reuters('worldnews'), amount=3, style=prefs.news.format)

Local Format Variables

forecast

moon

sun

twitter

stocks

headlines

`hrule`

`thinhrule`

`center(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])`

`right(string, [width=prefs.width,] [fillchar=' '])`

`align(left='', center='', right='', width=prefs.width, fillchar=' ')`

`today`

`iso_date`

`now_hm(fillchar='')`

`calendar`

`countdown`

`todo`

`work`

`twitter(handle='dril')`

`maze`

`forecast`

`tmrw_forecast`

`conditions`

`tmrw_conditions`

`weather_graph`

`sun`

`moon`

`headlines(url=news.reuters('worldnews'), amount=3, style=prefs.news.format)`

`forecast`

`moon`

`sun`

`twitter`

`stocks`

`headlines`