Emacs: Keep journaling on the go

I’ve been journaling a lot for many years. It cools down my brain a little and helps me reflect on things better. Emacs and org-mode are of course the tools I use to journal.

The problem

I can’t easily journal on the go when I only have my phone handy.

Solution

I’ve built incredibly minimal web page with a simple form. When the form is submitted it is captured by a script, parses the form data and calls my Emacs with --eval to add the form data into my journal.org file.

And when I say minimal I mean it. Just look at it. simple-org screenshot

Here is its whole source code:

<html>
    <head>
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=2.0, maximum-scale=4.0">
    </head>
    <body>
        <form action="" method="post">
            <input name="title" type="text"/><br/>
            <textarea name="content"></textarea><br/>
            <button>submit</button><br/>
        </form>
    </body>
</html>

<?php
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {
    $title = addslashes($_POST['title']);
    $content = addslashes($_POST['content']);

    # In actual file it's a oneliner.
    # I split it for this post purposes.
    # Hope it still works in case you decide to copy/paste.
    $cmd = "emacs --batch --load=\"~/.emacs.d/init.el\" --eval \"";
    $cmd .= "(progn ";
    $cmd .= "  (org-capture nil \\\"j\\\")";
    $cmd .= "  (insert \\\"{$title}\\\")";
    $cmd .= "  (end-of-buffer) (org-return) (org-cycle)";
    $cmd .= "  (insert \\\"{$content}\\\") (org-capture-finalize))\"";

    shell_exec($cmd);
}
?>

I start it with php -S 0.0.0.0:8080 and it just works. It knows what templates I use and it knows where the org-directory is.
I deployed it to my home server (just a laptop in my closet) and run it using Portainer.

My home server is constantly available for me thanks to Tailscale so I can access it outside of my home.

Why not

Why not Orgzly

Orgzly, for those who doesn’t know, is an Android app that allows to interact with org-mode files. One can import org files in it and then just update them on the go. Synchronization among machines can be done with Syncthing.

It’s very good app and I was using it for journaling a lot. Often times though, I want to add a note to my journal and then I realize that I need to create all the subheadings for today manually to follow the format I defined in my org-capture-templates. Not a big deal and it worked for awhile but it stopped me from dumping my thoughts into the journal quite a few times.

Why not Emacs on Android or Termux + Emacs

Both are great solutions as soon as one plugs in a keyboard into their phone. Using Emacs on a touch-screen is of course possible but the amount of frustration I get in the first 10 seconds of using it feels very much unjustified.

Why not run the same script on your phone locally

In this case I don’t need the whole home server setup with tailscale and portainer. Just syncthing which I already have would do the job.
Good point. I just wanted to have a bit more fun than that :)

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