creating an org-capture template

Question

I am trying to create an org-capture template for a grocery list, but there seems to be no easy way to get the result I want, and I'm pretty bad at programming. So I was hoping that maybe someone has a solution.

I would like to have a template that does the following: I have a grocery.org file, that should have roughly the following structure:

* <Todays Date> 
- [ ] item 1 
- [ ] item 2

The template should check if there already is a headline with the current date. If so, just add an item to the list. If not, create the headline with the current date and start the list. I tried a couple of things with the standard tools of org-capture, like (file+headline) and (checkitem) and so on, but I really cant get that done.

I really hope someone can offer some help, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you're willing to have things filed as

* <year>
** <month>
*** <day>

then using the file+datetree capture target instead of file+headline will work. It files to the current date, creating it if it doesn't exist.

Answer 2

To make the headline active in your agenda, you should add an active date to it. You can add a hook to org-capture to add a date.

(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("g" "Grocery today" checkitem (file+datetree "~/org/grocery.org")
         "[ ] %?")))

(defun schedule-grocery-hook ()
  (if (string= (org-capture-get :description)
               "Grocery today")     ;Must match the description in the template
      (org-schedule 0 (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d"))))

(add-hook 'org-capture-before-finalize-hook 'schedule-grocery-hook)

This is what I get in grocery.org:

* 2017
** 2017-04 April
*** 2017-04-16 Sunday
    SCHEDULED: <2017-04-16 Sun>
    - [ ] abc

Besides, org-datetree-add-timestamp may be of your interest. But it will add timestamps to all datetree headlines.