[handlebars] String related helper functions

[mhanberg]

Hey!

I am setting up a group and command alias for my one on one/syncs at work, and I've reach a point where I think some additional helper functions in the handlebars syntax would be nice.

I have a command alias set up called sync = "zk new --group=sync --extra with=$@", that I call as zk sync bob.

This fills in the following template

---
title: "{{ extra.with }} - {{ date now "full" }} - {{ date now "time" }}"
tags: [sync, {{ extra.with }}]
date: {{ date now "full" }} - {{ date now "time" }}
---

{{content}}

I would like to be able to downcase the tag and capitalize the section of the title, so that I can use the alias as zk sync bob or zk sync Bob and not have to worry about inconsistencies in the title and having duplicated tags. (Another thought is that tags could be case insensitive, but that is unrelated).

I think I can probably get by with some shell functions for now, but let me know what you think.

Thanks!

[mickael-menu]

I'm not against adding some string helpers in the Handlebars template. I actually added a few like {{concat}}. I'm just a bit afraid of ending up maintaining a whole toolkit in the template. 😄

An alternative would be to directly use shell commands in the template, with {{sh}}. Passing arguments to the shell command is not straightforward right now, but you could handle your example like this:

---
title: "{{ extra.with }} - {{ date now "full" }} - {{ date now "time" }}"
tags: [sync, {{#sh "tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'"}}{{ extra.with }}{{/sh}}]
date: {{ date now "full" }} - {{ date now "time" }}
---

{{content}}

Maybe the {{sh}} helper could be improved to pass arguments, to be able to write directly {{sh "tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'" extra.with}}.

[mhanberg]

I ended up with two zsh scripts that i call from within the alias

#!/usr/bin/env zsh
# Capitalize
echo "${(C)1}"

#!/usr/bin/env zsh
# Downcase
echo "${(L)1}"

sync = "zk new --group=sync --extra with=$(~/.bin/capitalize $1),tag=$(~/.bin/downcase $1)"

[mickael-menu]

That works too :)

You could even use directly the zsh expansion in the alias. zk uses $SHELL -c ... to expand aliases.

sync = "zk new --group=sync --extra with=${(C)1},tag=${(L)1}"