syclink

syclink is a comand line application to create a website with a link collection. syclink allows to add, update and delete links.

Installation

The application is installed with RubyGems

$ gem install syclink

Command Line Interface

syclink comes with a default website template and a CSS file. This can be adjusted to your convenience.

Templates

The templates are located in ~/.syc/syclink/templates and can be adjusted or completely replaced.

Command Line

Following list comprises the commands available

Website commands

website show - show all websites or search for websites
website remove - Remove website
website create - Create a HTML representation of the website
website check - Check from links that are not active anymore (pending)
website edit - Open the YAML file for editing (pending)

Link commands

add link - Add a link
add file - Add links from a file
update link - Update a link
update file - Update links saved to a file
delete - Delete one or more links
list - List all links with an optional filter
find - Find links based on a search string
merge - Merge multiple links with same URL

Import commands

import mf - Import Mozilla Firefox bookmarks
import gc - Import Google Chrome bookmarks
import ie - Import Internet Explorer bookmarks
import dir - Import links to files from a directory

Export commands

export xml - Export links in XML fromat (pending)
export json - Export links in JSON format (pending)
export csv - Export links in csv format

Commands

Following the commands and how to use them is explained based on examples.

Create a website

A website is send to syclink with the global -w flag. If the website does not exist yet the user is asked whether to create it and whether to set it as the default website. This is done with commands that require a website to operate on.

$ syclink -w my-new-website add "http://example.com"

Before the command add is executed the website is created. In this case a website called 'my-new-website' is created in the default directory at `~/.syc/syclink/websites/my-new-website.website

Commands that require a website are add, update, delete, list, find and website create.

If no website is specified the default website is used.

Add a link

A link may have a title, a description and a tag. Title, description and tag are optional but a link obviously has to be provided. If no title is given the link is used as the title.

$ syclink add --title "Test page" --tag TEST \
              --description 'For testing purposes' http://example.com

It is also possible to add links from a file

$ syclink file file-with-links

Update a link

To update a link the URL has to be specified. If more than one link has the same URL only the first link is updated.

$ syclink update --title "Example" http://example.com

Remove a Link

To remove one or more links the URLs have to be provided.

$ syclink delete http://example.com,http://challenge.com

List links

Links can be selected based on a filter. If no filter is given all links are listed. It is possible to specify the columns to print. Possible columns are url, name, description and tag.

$ syclink list --tag TEST --columns 'url,description'

url                | description
-------------------+---------------------
http://example.com | For testing purposes

Find links

It is also possible to search for links based on a search string. The find command searches all attributes of the links and is searching for the occurance of the search string within the attributes. So the search is not list only exact matches.

$ syclink find --columns 'url,tag' 'example' 

url                | tag
-------------------+-----
http://example.com | TEST

List websites

The websites are saved to ~/.syc/syclink/websites/ and the html representations are saved to ~/.syc/syclink/html/. When listing websites both webstites and html files are listed.

The following command will list all websites

$ syclink website list

To list websites based on a search string the search string has to be send to the list command

$ syclink website list "example"

If the --exact switch is given the command is only listing exact matches of the search string

$ syclink website list -e "http://example.com"

Remove websites

Websites and their html representations can be deleted based on a filter string. To delete all websites and respective html representation the filter string '*' can be provided

$ syclink website remove "*"

About to delete:

Websites
--------
/home/user/.syc/syclink/website/example.website

HTML-Files
----------
/home/user/.syc/syclink/html/example.html

Delete websites and corresponding html files (y/n)?

Other exmamples of filter strings are *mple which will find example as well as ex*.

Make a html representation of the website

The ultimate command is website create which will create the html representation of the website.

The html file is created based on an erb file located in ~/.syc/syclink/templates/syclink.html.erb. This can be adjusted to your convenience. The methods that can be used can be looked up in lib/syctask/website.rb.

The html file will search for a css file in the directory stylesheets which is relative to the html file. The stylesheet is named styles.css. It is possible to change it or replace it entirely. If the stylesheet's name is changed this also has to be done in ~/.syc/syclink/templates/syclink.html.erb.

There is also a scss file which needs to be compiled to css with sass like so

$ sass ~/.syc/syclink/html/stylesheets/styles.css.scss:\
  ~/.syc/syclink/html/stylesheets/styles.css

Warning: If the css file has been changed all changes will be overridden by sass.

Workflow

To create a website the steps are as follows

add links to a website
create the html representation

Following is showing the above sequence in commands

$ syclink -w example add "http://example.com" --tag EXAMPLE
$ syclink add "http://github.com" --tag DEVELOPMENT
$ syclink website create

Importing Bookmarks from Webrowsers

Firefox

The bookmarks of Firefox are located in the user's home folder in ~/.mozilla/SOME_CRYPTIC_NAME.default/places.sqlite.

The database can be explored with sqlite3 from the command line

$ cd ~/.mozilla/SOME_CRYPTIC_NAME.default/
$ sqlite3 places.sqlite
>

We want to retrieve url, title, description, tag, key and bookmark. tag, key and bookmark are good candidates for tags for the application.

At the command prompt of SQLite3 We can issue the query

sqlite> select p.id, p.url, p.title, b.id, b.fk, b.parent, b.title, 
   ...> k.keyword, a.content, b_t.title from moz_bookmarks b 
   ...> left outer join moz_keywords k on b.keyword_id = k.id 
   ...> left outer join moz_items_annos a on a.item_id = b.id 
   ...> left outer join moz_bookmarks b_t on b.parent = b_t.id 
   ...> join moz_places p on p.id = b.fk where p.url like "http%";
1|https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/central/||6|1|3|Getting Started|||\
Bookmarks Toolbar
2|http://www.ubuntu.com/||8|2|7|Ubuntu|||Ubuntu and Free Software links
3|http://wiki.ubuntu.com/||9|3|7|Ubuntu Wiki (community-edited website)|||\
Ubuntu and Free Software links
4|https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion||10|4|7|Make a Support \
Request to the Ubuntu Community|||Ubuntu and Free Software links
5|http://www.debian.org/||11|5|7|Debian (Ubuntu is based on Debian)|||Ubuntu \
and Free Software links
6|https://one.ubuntu.com/||12|6|7|Ubuntu One - The personal cloud that brings\
your digital life together|||Ubuntu and Free Software links
7|https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/help/||14|7|13|Help and Tutorials|||\
Mozilla Firefox
8|https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/customize/||15|8|13|Customize \
Firefox|||Mozilla Firefox
9|https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/||16|9|13|Get Involved|||Mozilla \
Firefox
10|https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/||17|10|13|About Us|||Mozilla Firefox
4717|http://codekata.com/|CodeKata|30|4717|5|CodeKata|liklo|How do you get \
to be a great musician? It helps to know the theory,
and to understand the mechanics of your instrument. It helps to have
talent. But …|Unsorted Bookmarks
399|http://localhost:3000/|Secondhand | Home|34|399|2|Secondhand | Home|||\
Bookmarks Menu
12870|https://www.sqlite.org/cli.html|Command Line Shell For SQLite|35|12870|\
5|Command Line Shell For SQLite|dark|What is this sqlite all about?|Unsorted \
Bookmarks
4717|http://codekata.com/|CodeKata|37|4717|36||||wenga
12870|https://www.sqlite.org/cli.html|Command Line Shell For SQLite|39|12870|\
38||||lite
12883|http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/chapters/sql/#h-2-5|SQL | The Bastards \
Book of Ruby|40|12883|5|SQL | The Bastards Book of Ruby|||Unsorted Bookmarks
12883|http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/chapters/sql/#h-2-5|SQL | The Bastards \
Book of Ruby|42|12883|41||||Ruby
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