Sort journal posts by date that memory occurred

[mej...@gmail.com]

Firstly, thank you to those involved in making TiddlyWiki the amazing tool that it is.

I currently use a proprietary journalling app called Day One for keeping a chronological record of special family memories, but am keen to migrate to TiddlyWiki.

In Day One, all entries are automatically sorted by the date that the memory occurred, as opposed to when the entry was actually posted. This is important to me, because entries are usually added in retrospect and my brain doesn't always remember to add them in the order that they actually took place!

For example, if I add three memories that took place in this order on 1 Jan; 1 Mar; 1 Feb, the entries automatically appear in descending order based on the date that the memory occurred like this: 1 Mar; 1 Feb; 1 Jan.

Is it possible to replicate this behaviour in TiddlyWiki? If so, what is the easiest way to set this up? I don't mind playing with things to get it working and have a technical background, but please do explain it like I'm 5!

Kind regards,

Mike

[torax...@googlemail.com]

Hi Mike,

do you mean with "date that memory occured" the initial recording date? In that case you "only" have to sort the journal entries by tiddler-creation-timestamp. Filter:

[tag[Journal]sort[created]]

Tiddler-Text for display:

<!-- Table only for formatting purpose -->
<table>
    <!-- Filtering all Tiddlers with tag "Journal", sort them acording created-Field -->
    <!-- an ! before sort would sort in decand order.-->
    <$list filter="[tag[Journal]sort[created]]">
        <!-- Line with data -->
        <tr>
            <!-- Link to Tiddler by using its title -->
            <td><$link to=<<currentTiddler>> /></td>
            <!-- Displaying the created-field of that tiddler -->
            <td><$list filter="[<currentTiddler>get[created]]"><<currentTiddler>></$list></td>
        </tr>
    </$list>
</table>

Cheers

Torax

[si]

@Mike This is totally achievable in TiddlyWiki, but it depends on exactly how you want to store your data.

One approach would be to create a new tiddler for each memory that you want to capture, and then use a field to store the date that it occurred.

1. Create a new tiddler, tag it "Memory" (or whatever you want), and fill in the title and text as you please.

2. Go to "Add new field" at the bottom of the tiddler, and create a field called "memory-date" (or whatever you want), with the date as its value.

3. To generate a list of all memories and sort by date, from newest to oldest, you can add the following macro to another tiddler:

<<list-links filter:"[tag[Memory]!sort[memory-date]]">>

One thing you might want to do is use the date-picker plugin to make it easier to set the date:

1. Install the plugin as per the instructions on the site.

2. Create a new tiddler with whatever name you want, and tag it "$:/tags/ViewTemplate". This is a special tag that tells TiddlyWiki to automatically display the contents of the tiddler on every other tiddler in the wiki.

3. Add the following text to the tiddler:

<$list filter="[is[current]tag[Memory]]">
<$edit-date icon="$:/plugins/kixam/datepicker/icon" field="memory-date"/>
</$list>

Now you will have a date picker icon on every tiddler with the tag "Memory". So you don't need to edit the field directly, just click on the icon and select the date.

[stan...@gmail.com]

Mike, what I think you are asking about is making journal entries after the date of the memory, but having it appear in chronological order.  Please correct me if I am wrong.   

What I did was to change the title of new journal tiddlers to be "YYYY-0MM-0DD".  New journal tiddler automatically get today's date, but if you have a memory, say from February 1 (2021-02-01), you can edit the journal tiddler title to get it in the correct chronological order.  A right side panel search will put them in chronological order. 

Stan 

[mej...@gmail.com]

@Torax - no, looking to sort by date of the memory itself rather than date the memory was posted.

@Si - that sounds like what I had in mind. I will give this a try and post an update.

@Stan - that’s correct. Although would prefer not to have to perform a search to view the posts.

Thank you all for your help. I will have a go and see if I can set this up and post an update.

Mike

[mej...@gmail.com]

I tried your approach Stan and it worked – hooray!

Thanks very much.

Mike

[torax...@googlemail.com]

Mike, you can partial automate the task:

1. set the title-setting in $:/ControlPanel

2. Activate the "New Journal"-Button in the Side-Bar:

Resulting:

[mej...@gmail.com]

I followed the instructions to implement the date picker and am confused:

The date picker appears below the content of the tiddler (top of image). Changing this date does not change the value of the `memory-date` field, so I assume this changing another date. Is it possible to have the date picker appear in the `field value` input box to simplify entry of `memory-date` instead?

Mike

[si]

@Mike I can see that you are using the tag "Journal" instead of "Memory". Maybe you forgot to change this in the example code I gave?

So <$list filter="[is[current]tag[Memory]]"> should be <$list filter="[is[current]tag[Journal]]">.

Having said that it still doesn't explain what I am seeing in your screenshot. If your test doesn't have any personal data would you be willing to share it as an attachment? It will be easier to diagnose that way.

>>> Is it possible to have the date picker appear in the `field value` input box to simplify entry of `memory-date` instead?

Instead of the tag "$:/tags/ViewTemplate" you could use the tag "$:/tags/EditTemplate". It does the same thing but transcludes the content in edit mode rather than view mode. This won't look very neat, but I'm just giving you a quick and simple way to do it.

[stan...@gmail.com]

I am happy to hear that, Mike.  Enjoy!

[mej...@gmail.com]

@Si - I changed tag to journal in both places. Happy to attach file - here it is.

Mike

[si]

@Mike I just tried it on the copy that you shared and it seems to work fine. Maybe you just made a type or something?

Anyway I attached it so you can see what I did - if you edit a tiddler with the tag "Journal" you will see a date picker at the bottom. It's ugly, but you can always fix that once you are happy with the functionality.

[mej...@gmail.com]

@Si Thanks for taking time to sort – this is exactly what I had in mind.

Mike