Is there a "better" way, using a user template, to get the last day of the month ?

[I-Pch]

Hi there 😊 !

So, first I really need to precise than I'm absolutely no dev' 😇 (please, bear with me 😇 )

Since I've discovered this magistral update on Templater (Thank you SilentVoid13 👍 ), I've spend a lot of time here trying to create a user template to automatically get me the Last day of this month 😊 .

It took me a while to discover I needed to use a Terminal Command (well, that's the only way I was able to make it work, after quite some research and vain trials looking in the direction of javascript 😇 )

Right now my working template look like this :

printf '%s' `date -v+1m -v1d -v-1d +"%d"`

It works and do what I need, but it seems a little slow (😇 ).

So, just in case I missed something (on how to write a user template), I just would like to know if there was a better way to get to the same result ? 😊

If anyone has any idea 💡 , I'm all ears 😊 !

Thank you very much in advance 👍 !!!

Edit: Changed the command, following the suggestion from another issue (#92 (comment))

[I-Pch]

Ok, well, after more research I've found another way to do this which is compatible with the plugins Calendar/Periodic notes 😊 .

So instead of using today's date (at the moment of creation of the note) to get the last day of the month, I use the "date" from the title of note 😊 (Just in case, I would need to create a note in the past, or the future, through the Calendar).

My user template is now looking like this :

printf `%s` `cal -d <% tp.file.title %> | awk 'NF {DAYS = $NF}; END {print DAYS}'`

... and I'm going to close this issue 😉 !

[luckman212]

@I-Pch This is pretty cool & clever usage of date ... never seen that before.

You can do it in JS also, which runs faster. Paste this code into a template file and execute it with or without a date selected in the editor, it should work:

<%*
function pad(n) {
  return n.toString().padStart(2, "0");
}
function fmtDate(d) {
  var yyyy = d.getFullYear();
  var mm = pad(d.getMonth() + 1);
  var dd = pad(d.getDate());
  var dArr = [ yyyy, mm, dd ];
  return(dArr.join('-'));
}
function lastDay(a) {
  if (typeof(a) === 'undefined' || a === '') {
    var d = new Date();
  } else {
    var d = new Date(a + ' 12:00:00');
    if (d.toString() === 'Invalid Date') {
      console.log('invalid date');
      return
    }
  }
  var lastDay = new Date(d.getFullYear(),d.getMonth()+1,0);
  lastDate = fmtDate(lastDay)
  lastDay = lastDay.getDate()
  return lastDate // change to "lastDay" to output day only
} %><% lastDay(tp.file.selection())%>

Last.Day.of.Month.mp4

(the dimming parts of the video are me activating the template window)

[I-Pch]

Hi @luckman212 😁 !

Thank you so very much for this very clean and clear example of using JS 👍 !!!

This will definitively help me to expand my use of Templater 🥳 ! (I'm not very used to JS, but I definitively understand it better than the Terminal 😆 )

Since I've opened and closed this issue, someone on discord gave me another idea which uses directly Moment.js (and it's also definitively easier to understand for me 😊 )

So, to get the last day of the month I use this in the Editor at the creation of the monthly note (using the plugin Periodic notes 😊 :

<% moment(tp.file.title,'YYYY-MM').endOf('month').format('ddd. DD/MM') %>

But, I'm going to play around with your example and immerse myself in JS (now that I have a real nice working example 👍 ) because I'm pretty sure it will help me to correct things in my templates that were still bothering me 😊 !