Dotnet Todo.txt CLI

dotnet-todo is a .NET command line port of Todo.txt that tries to remain faithful to the command line and functionality of the original shell script wherever possible. As such, the usage below is a modified copy of the original on GitHub.

• Installation
• Usage
• Configuration

Installation

This program is a dotnet tool and requires the latest version of the .NET SDK to be installed. .NET 8.0 or newer is required.

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-todo

Enabling Tab Completion

This program supports tab completion using dotnet-suggest. To enable, for each shell you must install the dotnet-suggest global tool and adding a shim to your profile. This only needs to be done once and work for all applications built using System.CommandLine.

Follow the setup instructions for your shell.

Usage

todo [-fhpantvV] [-d todo_config] action [task_number] [task_description]

For a complete list of options,

todo --help

Warning

The Windows command line uses the @ sign to indicate that command line arguments should be loaded from the file after the @ sign. This is a problem when searching for a context in your task list which also uses the command line. For example, if I wanted to search for my tasks with @work, I would normally try this and get the following error;

> todo list @work
Response file not found 'work'

In Powershell, the above command does not filter on the context and returns all items. If you try to add quotes, todo list "@work" in Powershell, then you get the same error.

I have not found a way to escape the @ on the command line and adding quotes does not work. As a workaround you can leave out the @ sign and search using todo list work. This will also include tasks with the word work, but that is minor. I may add listcon and listpri commands in the future.

If anyone has a proper workaround, please file an issue and I will update this.

Also note, that unlike the shell script version, quotes are required around any strings with spaces.

Configuration

This program does not support the default todo.cfg file as provided by the original shell script. Instead, this program uses a JSON file called ~/.todo.json in the user's home directory.

The defaults for this file put the todo files in a Todo directory in the users Documents directory.

Allowed colors are black, blue, cyan, gray, green, magenta, red, white, yellow, darkBlue, darkCyan, darkGray, darkGreen, darkMagenta, darkRed, darkYellow. Either omit or set any color to null to use the default terminal color.

You only need to add lines to ~/.todo.json that you want to change. Everything else will be set to the defaults listed below.

The format and defaults for this file are;

{
  "todoDirectory": "C:\\Users\\username\\Documents\\Todo",
  "todoFile": "Todo.txt",
  "doneFile": "Done.txt",
  "reportFile": "Report.txt",
  // Colors for each priority from A to Z
  "priorities": {
    "A": {
      "color": "yellow",
      "backgroundColor": null
    },
    "B": {
      "color": "green",
      "backgroundColor": null
    },
    "C": {
      "color": "cyan",
      "backgroundColor": null
    }
  },
  // Color of done items
  "doneColor": {
    "color": "darkGray",
    "backgroundColor": null
  },
  // Color of any +projects within the text
  "projectColor": {
    "color": "red",
    "backgroundColor": null
  },
  // Color of any @contexts within the text
  "contextColor": {
    "color": "red",
    "backgroundColor": null
  },
  // Color of dates like 2020-10-22
  "dateColor": {
    "color": "magenta",
    "backgroundColor": null
  },
  // Color of the task numbers
  "numberColor": {
    "color": "gray",
    "backgroundColor": null
  },
  // The color of name value pairs like DUE:2020-10-22
  "metaColor": {
    "color": "darkCyan",
    "backgroundColor": null
  }
}

Here is very simple example, just changing the directory that your todo files are stored in and using the defaults for everything else. Note that the trailing slashes on the directory are optional.

{
  "todoDirectory": "G:\\My Drive\\todo\\"
}