I use the calendar and scheduling application calcurse. This is a fine command-line program.
For example, with calcurse -a you can display the events for the day.
How i can send this info to notify-send, to show a notification on the desktop?
$ calcurse -a | notify-send
will not work ...
As often, reverting to a (very) basic, but nevertheless complete functionality feels weird, but in a way refreshing. Not sure if I would use it though.
Although the bottom of Calcurse's window suggests an option to pipe, and Calcurse's website mentions "user-configurable notification system" I couldn't find a way to use it for automatic scheduled notifications of all events.
At the same time: indeed such a reminder functionality would be a useful addition. The script below can be used as a plug- in for calcurse to show reminders. I hope you find it useful.
It is extremely easy to use; simply run the script in the background. All it does is check the events for today (updated twice per minute), and run notifications at an arbitrary time before expiration.
The output of the command:
calcurse -a
looks like:
12/29/15:
* Free today!
- 12:00 -> ..:..
See if this script does its job :)
It immediately occurs that the scheduled items start with a "-", while items for all day start with "*". What we need to do is create two groups (lists) of items:
Of the first category, we need to parse out the time, convert it into a format we can calculate with, so we can show reminder at n- minutes before expiration.
Subsequently, we need to "keep an eye on the clock", to compare the set time (of the event) to the current time. If the time span between the two enters the set warning time, simply show the notification.
Finally, to prevent repeated notification, we need to add the item to a "done" list.
Additionally, the script cleans up the "done" list; if an item does not occur in today's items anymore (either if you removed it or the day switched during your session), the items are removed automatically.
On startup (log in)
the script shows all today's items, in succession:
On an arbitrary time before expiration (in this case 15 minutes)
the scripts reminds you in a notification:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import subprocess
import time
import sys
warn = int(sys.argv[1])
def get(command):
return subprocess.check_output(command).decode("utf-8")
def convert(t):
# convert set time into a calculate- able time
return [int(n) for n in t.split(":")]
def calc_diff(t_curr, t_event):
# calculate time span
diff_hr = (t_event[0] - t_curr[0])*60
diff_m = t_event[1] - t_curr[1]
return diff_hr + diff_m
def cleanup(done, newlist):
# clean up "done" -lists
for item in done:
if not item in newlist:
done.remove(item)
return done
def show_time(event, s = ""):
# show scheduled event
hrs = str(event[0][0]); mnts = str(event[0][1])
mnts = "0"+mnts if len(mnts) != 2 else mnts
subprocess.call(["notify-send", s, "At "+hrs+":"+mnts+" - "+event[1]])
startups = []; times = []
while True:
currtime = convert(time.strftime("%H:%M"))
events = [l.strip() for l in get(["calcurse", "-a"]).splitlines()][1:]
# arrange event data:
groups = []; sub = []
for l in events:
if l.startswith("* "):
groups.append([l.replace("* ", "")])
elif l.startswith("- "):
sub.append(convert(l.split("->")[0].replace("-", "").strip()))
else:
groups.append(sub+[l])
sub = []
# run notifications
for item in groups:
# on startup:
if not item in startups:
# all- day events
if len(item) == 1:
subprocess.call(["notify-send", "Today - "+item[0]])
# time- specific events
elif len(item) == 2:
show_time(item, "Appointment")
startups.append(item)
# as a reminder:
if all([len(item) == 2, not item in times]):
span = calc_diff(currtime, item[0])
if span <= warn:
show_time(item, "[Reminder]")
times.append(item)
# clean up events
startups = cleanup(startups, groups); times = cleanup(times, groups)
time.sleep(30)
run_ccursereminders.pyTest- run it with the time you'd like to be warned (before expiration time, in minutes) as an argument. An example, to run reminders 30 minutes before your appointment:
python3 /path/to/run_ccursereminders.py 30
If it works as you wish, add it to Startup Applications: choose Dash > Startup Applications > Add. Add the command
/bin/bash -c "sleep 30 && python3 /path/to/run_ccursereminders.py 30"
where the last 30 is the number of minutes to warn you before an appointment expires
I was able to make it working with command substitution:
notify-send "calcurse notification header" "$(calcurse -n)"
I no this is old, but if anyone is still interested, the following settings work for me in my ~/.calcurse/conf file:
notification.command=calcurse --next | xargs -0 notify-send "Appointment"
daemon.enable=yes
notification.warning=300
I wrote a short bash script to be used in combination with cron to get notifications. It also has support to notify at variable intervals as well as notify for whole-day events.
This is the current version of the script:
#!/bin/bash
#Will send a notification if the next appointment in the next 24 hours occurs within $1 minutes
#Set $1 to be the time (minutes) you want the notification to pop up in advance before the appointment actually happens.
#This script should be executed by cron every minute or something like that thus it cannot run exactly $1 minutes before event.
#So we use $2 to be the time +/- of $1 that it is okay to send the notification.
#Probably set $2 this to the same period between when cron runs this script
notify_within=$1
script_frequency=$2
#if there are no appointments in the next two days, the stop right away
if [ "$(calcurse -a -d 2)" = "" ] ; then
exit 0
fi
if ! [ "$(calcurse -n)" = "" ] ; then #There is an event today with an associated time
hours_remaining=$(calcurse -n | tail -1 | sed 's/ //g' | sed 's/[//g' | sed 's/].//g' | sed 's/:..//g')
minutes_remaining=$(calcurse -n | tail -1 | sed 's/ //g' | sed 's/[//g' | sed 's/].//g' | sed 's/..://g')
time_remaining=$( echo "$hours_remaining * 60 + $minutes_remaining" | bc ) #in minutes. just adding the hours to minutes
#Test whether the next event is within the given time frame
#We need bc (calculator) to do the calculation. Will return "1" if the conditional is true
#0.95 factor because you can get notifications to pop 3 times if cron is running every 1 minute and you use script_frequency=1
notify_boolean=$( echo "$time_remaining <= ($script_frequency*0.95 + $notify_within) && $time_remaining >= ($notify_within - $script_frequency*0.95)" | bc )
if [ "$notify_boolean" = 1 ] ; then
eventname="$(calcurse -n | sed -n 2p | sed 's/^ \[..:..\] //g')"
event_in="$(calcurse -n | sed -n 2p | sed 's/^ \[//g' | sed 's/\].*//g')"
notify-send "Appointment: ${eventname} in ${event_in}"
fbcli -t -1 -E message-new-instant 2>&1 >/dev/null || true #send a request to vibrate and make sound with feedbackd if possible
fi
fi
tomorrow="$(date --date 'next day' +"%Y-%m-%d")"
daily_events="$(calcurse -a -d 2 | tr "\n" "@" | sed "0,/^.*${tomorrow}/ s///" | sed 's/^:@ * //g' | sed 's/@ * /, /g' | sed 's/@$//g' )" #Gives list of daily events tomorrow, Hopefully your event doesn't have "@" in it
if ! [ "$daily_events" = "" ] ; then
current_hour="$(date +"%H")"
current_minute="$(date +"%H")"
minutes_today=$(( $current_hour * 60 + $current_minute )) #Minutes that have elapsed today
minutes_left_today=$(( 2460 - $minutes_today )) #Minutes elapsed at midnight
notify_boolean_2="$(echo "$minutes_left_today <= ($script_frequency0.95 + $notify_within)" | bc )" #It is $notify_within minutes of midnight!
if [ "$notify_boolean_2" = 1 ] ; then
notify-send "Daily Events: $daily_events"
fbcli -t -1 -E message-new-instant 2>&1 >/dev/null || true #send a request to vibrate and make sound with feedbackd if possible
fi
fi
And this is the cron line to call it:
*/2 * * * * export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/$(id -u)/bus; /path/to/calendar_appointment_notify.sh 30 2
This script depends on
Of course, the current version can be found on GitHUB.
