Using JRNL tool and aliases to save research to specific journals

Bash Script for Journal Entries via Prompts

#!/bin/bash

# Prompt the user for structured input
read -p "Topic: " topic
read -p "Importance: " importance
read -p "Discoveries: " discoveries
read -p "Connections: " connections
read -p "Technical Details: " technical

# Build the entry using a heredoc
entry=$(cat <<EOF
Research @GitHub
Topic: $topic
Importance: $importance
Discoveries: $discoveries
Connections: $connections
Technical: $technical
EOF
)

# Optional: Show the entry before saving
echo
echo "Entry preview:"
echo "$entry"

read -p "Submit? [y/N] " confirm

if [[ "$confirm" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then
    jrnl cd "$entry"
    echo "✅ Entry saved."
else
    echo "❌ Entry canceled."
fi

 

This Bash script utilizes the JRNL command line tool to log responses to a series of question on the command line. In this case the topic is coding and development related discoveries when working and researching on general topics. Aliases created in .bashrc for the alternative "JRNL journal" as well as a custom alias to initiate the series of questions. In this file the "cd" coding journal is named but this could be omitted to make entries save to the default environment variable journal. If an "export journal_file" alias is separately created to make all entries temporarily save to a specific journal then new entries via this script should save to the set journal.