In an org-capture template definition, how can I have dynamic insertion of content into the target element?

Question

A complete org-capture template consists of six elements: keys, description, type, target, template, and properties. The manual explains how to use %-escapes to allow dynamic insertion of content into the template element, but is there any way to do the same thing into the target element?

For example, I have a set of templates I call annoyances in which I capture things that frustrate me about various pieces of software (I dunno why -- maybe so I can gather them together and one day sue someone!) They capture to a single file, but under headings grouping either a vendor or particular piece of software. Something like this fragment:

("a"  "Annoyance")
("aa" "Apple"
 entry (file+headline "~/org/annoyances.org"  "Apple") 
"* ANNOYANCE %^{Title}\n%?"
 :prepend t :empty-lines: 1)
("ae" "Evernote"
 entry (file+headline "~/org/annoyances.org"  "Evernote") 
 "* ANNOYANCE %^{Title}\n%?"
 :prepend t :empty-lines: 1)
("ag" "Google"
 entry (file+headline "~/org/annoyances.org"  "Google") 
 "* ANNOYANCE %^{Title}\n%?"
 :prepend t :empty-lines: 1)

... and so on

But other than the names of the culprits, those templates are all identical, and my actual templates are a bit longer than those I've shown, and the list of people-or-code-I-love-to-hate is growing, so to save a lot of duplication what I'd rather have is a single template that Just Figures It Out from the content I provide during capture. Something like this (obviously broken) fragment:

("a"  "Annoyance"
 entry (file+headline "~/org/annoyances.org"  %^{Culprit}) 
"* ANNOYANCE %^{Title}\n%?"
 :prepend t :empty-lines: 1)

An alternative method would be to use tags since those live in the template element and so can make use of the %-escapes, and then I can use sparse trees if I want to home in on a particular culprit. But is there a way to have the target element dynamically created in the process of entering a capture, e.g. by somehow getting a %-escape value into the target?

Answer 1

Just write a function to add the template: and call it for each annoyance:

(defun add-annoyance (key product)
  (add-to-list 'org-capture-templates
               `(,(concat "a" key) ,product
                 entry (file+headline "~/org/annoyances.org"  "Google") 
                 "* ANNOYANCE %^{Title}\n%?"
                 :prepend t :empty-lines: 1)))

(add-annoyance "g" "Google")