Template syntax¶

zk uses the Handlebars template syntax for its templates. The list of variables available depends of the running command:

Template context when creating notes (i.e. zk new)
Template context when formatting a note (i.e. zk list --format <template>)

Additional helpers¶

Besides the default Handlebars helpers, zk ships with additional helpers which you might find useful. They are available to all templates.

Format Link helper¶

The {{format-link}} helper renders an internal link to another note, according to the user preferences set in the note formats configuration.

{{format-link "path/to note.md" "An interesting note"}}

can generate (depending on the user config):

[An interesting note](path/to%20note.md)
[[path/to note]]

The second parameter title is optional.

String helpers¶

There are a couple of template helpers operating on strings.

Concat helper¶

The {{concat s1 s2}} helper concatenates two strings together. For example {{concat '> ' 'A quote'}} produces > A quote.

Substring helper¶

The {{substring s index length}} helper extracts a portion of the given string. For example:
- {{substring 'A full quote' 2 4}} outputs full
- {{substring 'A full quote' -5 5}} outputs quote

Date helpers¶

Date from natural string helper¶

You can get a date object from a natural human date (e.g. tomorrow, 2 weeks ago, 2022-03-24) using the {{date}} helper. It is most useful when paired with the {{format-date}} helper.

{{date "tomorrow"}}

{{format-date (date "last week") "timestamp"}}

Date formatting helper¶

The {{format-date}} helper formats the given date for display.

Template contexts usually provide a now variable which can be used to print the current date.

The default format output by {{format-date <variable>}} looks like 2009-11-17, but you can choose a different format by providing a second argument, e.g. {{format-date now "medium"}}.

Format	Output	Notes
`short`	11/17/2009
`medium`	Nov 17, 2009
`long`	November 17, 2009
`full`	Tuesday, November 17, 2009
`year`	2009
`time`	20:34
`timestamp`	200911172034	Useful for sortable filenames
`timestamp-unix`	1258490098	Number of seconds since January 1, 1970
`elapsed`	12 years ago	Time elapsed since then in human-friendly format

If none of the provided formats suit you, you can use a custom format using strftime-style placeholders, e.g. {{format-date now "%m-%d-%Y"}}. See man strftime for a list of placeholders.

Slug helper¶

The {{slug}} helper generates a URL friendly version of a text. For example, {{slug "This will be slugified!"}} becomes this-will-be-slugified.

This is mostly useful to generate a safe filename containing the title passed to zk new --title "An interesting note". With the filename template {{slug title}}, it becomes an-interesting-note.md.

Prepend helper¶

The {{prepend}} helper adds a prefix to every line of the given text or block. You can use it to generate a Markdown quote, for example:

{{prepend "> " "A quote"}}

{{#prepend "> "}}
A multiline
quote.
{{/prepend}}

Shell helper¶

The {{sh}} helper will call the given shell command and insert its output in the template. Your imagination is the limit!

Get today's events from your calendar:
{{sh "icalBuddy -b '* ' -nc eventsToday"}}

Insert a random quote:
{{prepend '> ' (sh 'fortune')}}

Download today's weather:
{{sh 'curl http://wttr.in/?0'}}

When used as a block helper, the block content will be passed to the command through a standard input pipe.

Will output "HELLO, WORLD!":
{{#sh "tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'"}}
Hello, world!
{{/sh}}

Style helper¶

The {{style}} helper is mostly useful when formatting content for the command-line. See the styling rules for more information.

{{style 'red bold' 'A text'}}

{{#style 'underline'}}Another text{{/style}}

JSON helper¶

The {{json}} helper serializes its argument to a JSON value. This is useful to generate valid JSON objects, for example:

{ "title": {{json title}}, "tags": {{json tags}} }
->
{ "title": "A \"quoted\" title", "tags": ["example", "json"] }

Warning: The template parser trips on }}}, so make sure to add an extra space before the third }.

You can serialize the whole template context as a JSON object with {{json .}}, which is how zk list --format json produces its output.