This package provides functions for creating reverse date trees, which are similar to date trees as supported by built-in functions of Org mode (e.g. org-capture) but in a reversed order. Since newer contents come first in reverse date trees, they are more useful in situations where you want to find latest activities on a particular subject using a search tool like helm-org-rifle.

• Features
• Prerequisites
• Usage
  • Configuring date formats
    • Non-reverse date tree
  • Defining a capture template
  • Jumping to a particular date
  • Defining a refile function
  • Archiving
  • Defining an agenda command
  • Cleaning up empty dates
• Configuration examples
• Changelog
  • 0.3.5 (2020-11-28)
  • 0.3.4 (2020-09-23)
  • 0.3.3 (2020-03-25)
  • 0.3.2 (2020-03-21)
  • 0.3.1 (2020-02-24)
• License

• Reverse date trees, where latest contents are shown first.
• You can customize the format of the date tree.
• Week trees are also supported. You can even create date trees with four levels (year-month-week-date) or any number of levels.
• Configurations of date trees are stored in file headers, so each file is ensured to have a single date tree with a consistent structure.
• Configuration is done interactively on first creation.

• Emacs 26.1
• dash

The following functions retrieve a configuration from the file header:

• Use org-reverse-datetree-goto-date-in-file to jump to a date in the date tree. If this function is called non-interactively and the time argument is nil, it jumps to the current date. This can be used for org-capture.
• org-reverse-datetree-goto-read-date-in-file is similar as above, but it always prompts for a date even if the function is called non-interactively.
• org-reverse-datetree-refile-to-file is a function that refiles the current entry into a date tree. This can be used to build a custom command for refiling an entry to a particular file.

The format configuration is stored in the file header of each Org file, as shown in the following example:

#+REVERSE_DATETREE_DATE_FORMAT: %Y-%m-%d %A
#+REVERSE_DATETREE_WEEK_FORMAT: %Y W%W
#+REVERSE_DATETREE_YEAR_FORMAT: %Y
#+REVERSE_DATETREE_USE_WEEK_TREE: t

These attributes are added by functions in this package on initial creation of the date tree, so you usually don’t have to manually edit them.

You can customize the default format by setting org-reverse-datetree-{year,month,week,date}-format. Note that the formats should be basically numeric and zero-prefixed, since date-tree headings are ordered lexicographically by their texts. You should avoid a month format starting with a string like “Feb” or “February”. If you want to contain one, you should append it to a zero-prefixed numeric month.

Another way to configure the structure is to set org-reverse-datetree-level-formats variable as a file-local variable. Through the variable, you can define a structure with any number of levels. For example, the following configuration enables date trees consisting of four levels (year-month-week-date) in all files (thanks @samspo for reporting):

(setq-default org-reverse-datetree-level-formats
              '("%Y"                    ; year
                (lambda (time) (format-time-string "%Y-%m %B" (org-reverse-datetree-monday time))) ; month
                "%Y W%W"                ; week
                "%Y-%m-%d %A"           ; date
                ))

Even though this package is named org-reverse-datetree, it is now possible to create a non-reverse date tree, i.e. a normal ascending date tree.

To enable the feature, set org-reverse-datetree-non-reverse variable to non-nil. It is a file-local variable. The default continues to be a reverse date tree.

You can define an org-capture template which inserts an entry into a date tree with org-starter package as follows:

(org-starter-def-capture "p"
  "Commonplace book plain entry"
  entry
  (file+function "cpb.org" org-reverse-datetree-goto-date-in-file)
  "* %?"
  :clock-in t :clock-resume t :empty-lines 1)

Use org-reverse-datetree-goto-date-in-file command to jump to a particular date in the date tree of the current file.

With org-reverse-datetree-refile-to-file, you can define a function which can be used to refile entries to the date tree in a particular file:

(defun akirak/org-refile-to-cpb (arg)
  (interactive "P")
  (org-reverse-datetree-refile-to-file
   (org-starter-locate-file "cpb.org" nil t) nil
   :ask-always arg :prefer '("CREATED_TIME" "CREATED_AT" "CLOSED")))

The heading properties given as :prefer to the function are used to determine the date of an entry.

You can use this function both in org-mode (either on a single entry or on multiple entries under selection) and in org-agenda-mode (either on a single entry or on bulk entries). It retrieves a date for each entry if it operates on multiple entries.

org-starter-locate-file is a function from org-starter package, which locates the location of an Org file. If you don’t use the package, you should give an absolute path:

(defun akirak/org-refile-to-cpb (arg)
  (interactive "P")
  (org-reverse-datetree-refile-to-file
   "~/org/cpb.org" nil
   :ask-always arg :prefer '("CREATED_TIME" "CREATED_AT" "CLOSED")))

A recommended way to invoke this command is to add an entry to org-starter-extra-refile-map in org-starter package:

(add-to-list 'org-starter-extra-refile-map
             '("p" akirak/org-refile-to-cpb "cpb"))

Then you can run org-starter-refile-by-key and press p key to refile the selected entries to cpb.org.

The destination is specified in either REVERSE_DATETREE_ARCHIVE_FILE property (inherited) or REVERSE_DATETREE_ARCHIVE_FILE file header. It should be a file path. For now, the target file cannot contain multiple date trees.

From inside org-agenda, you can use org-reverse-datetree-agenda-archive. It doesn’t work on bulk entries for now.

With org-ql package, you can define a function for browsing entries in a reverse date tree:

(org-ql-search "~/org/cpb.org"
  (level 4)
  :sort priority)

You can also define a custom org-agenda command:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("c" "Browse entries in cpb.org"
         org-ql-block '(level 4)
         ((org-super-agenda-groups
           '((:todo "DONE")
             (:todo t)))
          (org-agenda-files '("~/org/cpb.org"))))))

org-super-agenda-groups is an option for org-super-agenda for grouping the contents. If you don’t activate org-super-agenda-mode, that option is simply ignoerd.

You can use org-reverse-datetree-cleanup-empty-dates command to clean up date entries that contains no children.

• An Annotated Spacemacs - For an org-mode workflow ·: Using the package in some of his org-capture templates for clippling URLs, notes, and tasks.

• Fix bugs with org-reverse-datetree-cleanup-empty-dates.
• Switch to elinter for CI.

Add a function for archiving from org-agenda, org-reverse-datetree-agenda-archive.

Add an initial support for archiving.

Add support for a non-reverse date tree.

• Fix a bunch of issues with org-reverse-datetree-cleanup-empty-dates. Explicitly documented the function in README.
• Switch to GitHub Actions on running CI.

GPL v3