How to refile into a datetree

Question

Is it possible to refile a dated item into the appropriate place in a datetree?

I have seen some posts that describe the use of org-archive-location but I cannot get that to work - perhaps its the wrong thing to use?

Answer 1

I posted a previous version of this code to answer a similar question on Stack Overflow. This version is slightly imporoved.

You can select a file to refile into and if the entry has no timestamp, the current date is used.

(defun org-refile-to-datetree (&optional file)
  "Refile a subtree to a datetree corresponding to it's timestamp.

The current time is used if the entry has no timestamp. If FILE
is nil, refile in the current file."
  (interactive "f")
  (let* ((datetree-date (or (org-entry-get nil "TIMESTAMP" t)
                            (org-read-date t nil "now")))
         (date (org-date-to-gregorian datetree-date))
         )
    (with-current-buffer (current-buffer)
      (save-excursion
        (org-cut-subtree)
        (if file (find-file file))
        (org-datetree-find-date-create date)
        (org-narrow-to-subtree)
        (show-subtree)
        (org-end-of-subtree t)
        (newline)
        (goto-char (point-max))
        (org-paste-subtree 4)
        (widen)
        ))
    )
  )

Edit: According to the manual save-excursion should be used within with-current-buffer to avoid certain side-effects.

Answer 2

The accepted answer is likely to work, but misses some things. In particular, since it does the refiling itself, it won't trigger the actions from org-log-refile and the like.

Based in part on some other code from a site I now can't find, I put together the following:

(defun my/org-read-datetree-date (d)
  "Parse a time string D and return a date to pass to the datetree functions."
  (let ((dtmp (nthcdr 3 (parse-time-string d))))
    (list (cadr dtmp) (car dtmp) (caddr dtmp))))

(defun my/org-refile-to-archive-datetree ()
  "Refile an entry to a datetree under an archive."
  (interactive)
  (require 'org-datetree)
  (let ((datetree-date (my/org-read-datetree-date (org-read-date t nil))))
    (org-refile nil nil (list nil (buffer-file-name) nil
                              (save-excursion
                                (org-datetree-find-date-create datetree-date)))))
  (setq this-command 'my/org-refile-to-journal))

This passes the target location to org-refile itself, which can thus do the correct subsidiary processing. My particular setup is to refile to an archive in the same file, which has a DATE_TREE property in order to cause the datetree functions to work underneath it. If you want to specify a file, you can wrap the call in with-current-buffer and use find-file inside.

Answer 3

The previous answer by Tom Hunt is almost ok, but org-refile needs both the file and the position in the file as the rfloc argument. Unfortunately, org-datetree-find-date-create does not return this position. (Is it something that changed in recent versions of Org mode?) So here is a slightly enhanced version of the same function:

(defun my/org-refile-to-archive-datetree (&optional bfn)
  "Refile an entry to a datetree under an archive."
  (interactive)
  (require 'org-datetree)
  (let* ((bfn (or bfn (find-file-noselect (expand-file-name "~/Org/Diary.org"))))
         (datetree-date (my/org-read-datetree-date (org-read-date t nil))))
    (org-refile nil nil (list nil (buffer-file-name bfn) nil
                              (with-current-buffer bfn
                                (save-excursion
                                  (org-datetree-find-date-create datetree-date)
                                  (point))))))
  (setq this-command 'my/org-refile-to-journal))

I added an optional buffer-file-name argument and as a default value, I am using my ~/Org/Diary.org journal file.