Extending minchin.jrnl

minchin.jrnl can be extended with custom importers and exporters.

Note that custom importers and exporters can be given the same name as a built-in importer or exporter to override it.

Custom Importers and Exporters are traditional Python packages, and are installed (into minchin.jrnl) simply by installing them so they are available to the Python interpreter that is running minchin.jrnl.

Exporter are also used as “formatters” when entries are written to the command line.

Rational

I added this feature because minchin.jrnl was overall working well for me, but I found myself maintaining a private fork so I could have a slightly customized export format. Implementing (import and) export plugins was seen as a way to maintain my custom exporter without the need to maintaining my private fork.

This implementation tries to keep plugins as light as possible, and as free of boilerplate code as reasonable. As well, internal importers and exporters are implemented in almost exactly the same way as custom importers and exporters, and so it is hoped that plugins can be moved from “contributed” to “internal” easily, or that internal plugins can serve as a base and/or a demonstration for external plugins.

– @MinchinWeb, May 2021

Entry Class

Both the Importers and the Exporters work on the Entry class. Below is a (selective) description of the class, it’s properties and functions:

  • Entry (class) at minchin.jrnl.Entry.Entry.

    • title (string): a single line that represents a entry’s title.

    • date (datetime.datetime): the date and time assigned to an entry.

    • body (string): the main body of the entry. Can be basically any length. jrnl assumes no particular structure here.

    • starred (boolean): is an entry starred? Presumably, starred entries are of particular importance.

    • tags (list of strings): the tags attached to an entry. Each tag includes the pre-facing “tag symbol”.

    • __init__(journal, date=None, text=””, starred=False): contractor method

      • journal (minchin.jrnl.Journal.Journal): a link to an existing Journal class. Mainly used to access it’s configuration.

      • date (datetime.datetime)

      • text (string): assumed to include both the title and the body. When the title, body, or tags of an entry are requested, this text will the parsed to determine the tree.

      • starred (boolean)

Entries also have “advanced” metadata if they are using the DayOne backend, but we’ll ignore that for the purposes of this demo.

Custom Importer

If you have a (custom) datasource that you want to import into your jrnl (perhaps like a blog export), you can write a custom importer to do this.

An importer takes the source data, turns it into Entries and then appends those entries to a Journal. Here is a basic Importer, assumed to be provided with a nicely formatted JSON file:

Note that the above is very minimal, doesn’t do any error checking, and doesn’t try to import all possible entry metadata.

Another potential use of a custom importer is to effectively create a scripted entry creator. For example, maybe each day you want to create a journal entry that contains the answers to specific questions; you could create a custom “importer” that would ask you the questions, and then create an entry containing the answers provided.

Some implementation notes:

  • The importer class must be named Importer, and should sub-class minchin.jrnl.plugins.base.BaseImporter.

  • The importer module must be within the minchin.jrnl.contrib.importer namespace.

  • The importer must not have any __init__.py files in the base directories (but you can have one for your importer base directory if it is in a directory rather than a single file).

  • The importer must be installed as a Python package available to the same Python interpreter running jrnl.

  • The importer must expose at least the following the following members:

    • version (string): the version of the plugin. Displayed to help the user debug their installations.

    • names (list of strings): these are the “names” that can be passed to the CLI to involve your importer. If you specify one used by a built-in plugin, it will overwrite it (effectively making the built-in one unavailable).

    • import_(journal, input=None): the actual importer. Must append entries to the journal passed to it. It is recommended to accept either a filename or standard input as a source.

Custom Exporter

Custom exporters are useful to make minchin.jrnl ‘s data available to other programs. One common usecase would to generate the input to be used by a static site generator or blogging engine.

An exporter take either a whole journal or a specific entry and exports it. Below is a basic JSON Exporter; note that a more extensive JSON exporter is included in minchin.jrnl and so this (if installed) would override the built in exporter.

Note that the above is very minimal, doesn’t do any error checking, and doesn’t export all entry metadata.

Some implementation notes:

  • the exporter class must be named Exporter and should sub-class jrnl.plugins.base.BaseExporter.

  • the exporter module must be within the minchin.jrnl.contrib.exporter namespace.

  • The exporter must not have any __init__.py files in the base directories (but you can have one for your exporter base directory if it is in a directory rather than a single file).

  • The exporter must be installed as a Python package available to the same Python interpreter running jrnl.

  • the exporter should expose at least the following the following members (there are a few more you will need to define if you don’t subclass minchin.jrnl.plugins.base.BaseExporter):

    • version (string): the version of the plugin. Displayed to help the user debug their installations.

    • names (list of strings): these are the “names” that can be passed to the CLI to invole your exporter. If you specific one used by a built-in plugin, it will overwrite it (effectively making the built-in one unavailable).

    • extension (string): the file extention used on exported entries.

    • export_entry(entry): given an entry, returns a string of the formatted, exported entry.

    • export_journal(journal): (optional) given a journal, returns a string of the formatted, exported entries of the journal. If not implemented, jrnl will call export_entry() on each entry in turn and then concatenate the results together.

Special Exporters

There are a few “special” exporters, in that they are called by minchin.jrnl in situations other than a traditional export. They are:

  • short – called by jrnl --short. Displays each entry on a single line. The default is to print the timestamp of the entry, followed by the title. The built-in (default) plugin is at minchin.jrnl.plugins.exporter.short.

  • default – called when a different format is not specified. The built-in (default) plugin is at minchin.jrnl.plugins.exporter.pretty.

Development Tips

  • Editable installs (pip install -e ...) don’t seem to (always?) play nice with the namespace layout. If your plugin isn’t appearing, try a non-editable install of both minchin.jrnl and your plugin. If that still doesn’t work, try re-creating your virtual environment.

  • If you run minchin.jrnl from the main project root directory (the one that contains minchin.jrnl‘s source code), namespace plugins won’t be recognized. This is (I suspect) because the Python interpreter will find your minchin source directory (which doesn’t contain your namespace plugins) before it find your “site-packages” directory (i.e. installed packages, which will recognize namespace packages).

  • Don’t name your plugin file testing.py or it won’t be installed (at least automatically) by pip.

  • For examples, you can look to the minchin.jrnl‘s internal importers and exporters. As well, there are some basic external examples included in minchin.jrnl‘s git repo at tests/external_plugins_src (including the example code above).

  • overwrite def make_filename(cls, entry) (class method) to change the exported files’ filenames.