--- title: Blog Composer Script layout: post date: 2022-09-07 17:47:15 permalink: /dev/2022/SEP/07-blog-composer-script.php excerpt_separator: --- One thing I love about this setup is I just have to write markdown; and I can easily do that from my text editor in console. However it became apparent that I needed more stuff in my front matter than I thought; so I decided to automate things a bit. ```text --- title: Blog Composer Script layout: post date: 2022-09-07 17:47:15 permalink: /dev/2022/SEP/07-blog-composer-script.php excerpt_separator: --- ``` This is quite literally the front matter for this post. No, it's not a whole lot of information; but it would be really nice to just have all of that dumped in to a file right in to a ready-to-write state. Run a command and get to typing. This why we run Linux and self-host, right? To automate all the self-hosted things! Well, that's why I do it. Either way, here's the bash script that I hastly hacked together: ```bash #!/bin/bash # pickmy.org post composer # by: Jay/nq4t/@music_onhold # usage: ./compose.sh [category] [title] # example: /compose.sh blog MY AWESOME POST TITLE NO YOU DON'T NEED TO ENCLOSE IT! # run in the root of your site files/repository # assumes categories are directories in root # Variables and category argument category=$1 pd=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d') pt=$(date +'%T') file=blog$$.md # Ditch the category argument shift 1 # Read everything else as title. title=$@ t=${title,,} t=${t// /-} fd=$(date +'%Y/%^b/%d') # Let's write the front matter to our temp file. printf -- "---\ntitle: $title\nlayout: post\ndate: $pd $pt\npermalink: /$category/$fd-$t.php\nexcerpt_separator: \n---\n\n" >> $file # Write the post in whatever editor you want. nano + $file # Move the file to category/_posts replacing spaces with hyphen mv $file $category/_posts/$pd-${t// /-}.md # Display some output to verify it's done. printf "\nPost $title created in $category: $category/_posts/$pd-$t.md\n\n" ``` Weeeeee, it's more comments than actual code; and it literally is just printing lines to files and playing fill in the blanks. Plus I don't think I have to write much more, it's already documented. The only issue I had was when I had a naughty character in a title; so I may need to improve this by adding some stuff to escape those. You can use any editor you want. I'm just used to nano; and being even lazier; I wanted nano to drop the cursor at the *end* of the file. It's made dealing with the front matter sooooooo much easier. Template it once and fill in the blanks.