datepick

Datepick - Interactive Terminal Date Picker

A powerful, interactive terminal date picker built with Ruby and rcurses. Features vim-style navigation, configurable date formats, multiple month views, and extensive keyboard shortcuts. Perfect for shell scripts and command-line workflows that need date selection.

Features

• Interactive calendar display with multiple months
• Vim-style navigation with hjkl keys and numeric prefixes
• Configurable date output formats with quick presets
• Customizable multi-month view (months before/after current)
• Week start preference (Monday or Sunday)
• Visual highlights for today, selected date, and weekends
• Flicker-free rendering using rcurses
• Persistent configuration saved to ~/.datepick

Installation

Install from RubyGems:

gem install datepick

Usage

Simply run datepick in your terminal:

datepick

The selected date will be printed to stdout when you press Enter, making it perfect for shell scripts:

# Capture selected date in a variable
selected_date=$(datepick)
echo "You selected: $selected_date"

# Use in file operations
cp important_file.txt "backup_$(datepick).txt"

Keyboard Navigation

Basic Movement

• Arrow keys or hjkl - Navigate between dates
• Enter - Select current date and exit
• q - Quit without selecting

Advanced Navigation

• n/p - Next/Previous month
• N/P - Next/Previous year
• t - Jump to today
• H/^ - Go to start of week
• L/$ - Go to end of week
• Home - Go to start of month
• End - Go to end of month

Vim-style Jumps

• [number]g - Jump forward by number of days
  • Example: 7g jumps 7 days ahead
  • Example: 30g jumps 30 days ahead

Configuration

• c - Enter configuration mode
• r - Force refresh display

Date Format Options

When configuring date format, you can either:

• Use quick presets by entering a number (1-8):

  • 1: 2025-07-01 (ISO format)
  • 2: 01/07/2025 (European)
  • 3: 07/01/2025 (US format)
  • 4: July 01, 2025 (Long format)
  • 5: Jul 01, 2025 (Abbreviated)
  • 6: 20250701 (Compact)
  • 7: 01-Jul-2025 (DD-Mon-YYYY)
  • 8: Tuesday, July 01, 2025 (Full with weekday)

• Enter custom format using Ruby's strftime syntax:

  • %Y-%m-%d - ISO format (default)
  • %d/%m/%Y - European format
  • %B %d, %Y - Long format
  • See Ruby strftime documentation for all options

Configuration Options

Access configuration by pressing c:

• Date format: Output format for selected date
• Months before: Number of months to show before current month
• Months after: Number of months to show after current month
• Week starts Monday: Toggle between Monday/Sunday week start

Configuration is automatically saved to ~/.datepick and persists between sessions.

Visual Features

• Current month: Bold and underlined month header
• Today's date: Highlighted in magenta and bold
• Selected date: Yellow background with bold text
• Weekends: Red text for Saturday/Sunday
• Day headers: Bold with darker colors for better visibility

Shell Integration Examples

Bash Scripts

#!/bin/bash
echo "Select a date for the backup:"
backup_date=$(datepick)
tar -czf "backup_${backup_date}.tar.gz" /important/files/

ZSH Function

# Add to your .zshrc
function schedule() {
    local date=$(datepick)
    echo "Scheduled for: $date"
    # Add your scheduling logic here
}

Git Commits with Specific Dates

# Select a date and create a commit with that date
commit_date=$(datepick)
git commit --date="$commit_date" -m "Your commit message"

Requirements

• Ruby 2.7 or higher
• rcurses gem (automatically installed)
• Terminal with color support

Development

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/isene/datepick.git
cd datepick

Install dependencies:

bundle install

Run locally:

ruby -Ilib bin/datepick

Contributing

• Fork the repository
• Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
• Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
• Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
• Open a Pull Request

Inspiration

Inspired by pickdate and designed to integrate seamlessly with terminal workflows.

License

This project is released under the Unlicense - see the project repository for details.

Author

Created by Geir Isene

Links

• Homepage: https://isene.com/
• Source Code: https://github.com/isene/datepick
• RubyGems: https://rubygems.org/gems/datepick