Time entries: group by

[zmoog]

I want use time entries to get insights about how a spend my time in a given time frame.

The first insight I want to get is the work type (goal, support, hr, sync): show me my work types split.

I usually tag time entries by a type:WORK_TYPE tag.

For example:

$ tgl entries --project-id 178435728 group-by --field tags --start-date 2023-01-30
       Time Entries

  tags           Duration
 ─────────────────────────
  type:meeting   7:38
  type:goal      5:51
  type:support   4:04
  type:sync      3:45
  type:hr        0:54

[zmoog]

note: I can put together a quick prototype using https://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html#itertools.groupby

[zmoog]

Evaluate putting some visual hints with https://pypi.org/project/termgraph/

[zmoog]

Prototyping a simple 'group by' sub-command for the 'entries' command:

$ tgl entries group-by --field tags --start-date 2023-01-31

        Time Entries

  tags           Duration
 ───────────────────────────
                 8 hours
  type:meeting   3 hours
  type:support   2 hours
  type:sync      an hour
  type:goal      47 minutes
  type:hr        44 minutes

[zmoog]

We need an option to get more resolution on the duration. For example, sometimes I want "an hour", and sometime I want "1:23".

We should add something like --duration-format hh:mm | HUMAN

[zmoog]

Here's the test result of switching from

naturaldelta(duration)

to

precisedelta(duration, suppress=["seconds"], format="%0.0f")`:

result:

$ tgl entries group-by --field tags --start-date 2023-02-01                                                                                                                                                           

              Time Entries               
                                         
  tags           Duration                
 ─────────────────────────────────────── 
                 8 hours and 42 minutes  
  type:goal      5 hours and 4 minutes   
  type:sync      1 hour and 27 minutes   
  type:meeting   58 minutes              
                                         

[zmoog]

IMO this format is better suited for the granularity of this view. I'm considering to switching to this format as the only option.

[zmoog]

After a few tests, the most readable format at glance is the old hh:mm format. Seconds are not relevant at this scale, and the entries rarely last more than a handful of hours.

So I guess I'm sticking with this:

$ tgl entries group-by --field tags

       Time Entries

  tags           Duration
 ─────────────────────────
  type:meeting   3:31
                 2:32
  type:support   1:37
  type:sync      0:47
  type:hr        0:09

[zmoog]

The next step is adding some project filtering capabilities, so I can only get the time entries for a specific project.

I often want to list or group by entries for work or personal activities.

[zmoog]

Here's an example:

$ tgl entries --project-id 178435728 group-by --field tags
       Time Entries

  tags           Duration
 ─────────────────────────
  type:meeting   2:53
  type:support   1:37
  type:sync      0:47
  type:hr        0:09

[zmoog]

I should add the total duration, maybe even a percentage.

[zmoog]

The Tables documentation on Rich is amazing https://rich.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tables.html