#+TITLE: Org Agenda Online
#+DATE: 2021-01-13T20:02:32-05:00
#+DRAFT: true
#+DESCRIPTION:
#+TAGS[]: emacs org-mode agenda
#+KEYWORDS[]: emacs org-mode agenda
#+SLUG:
#+SUMMARY:

I absolutely love [[https://orgmode.org/][Org mode]]. I use it extensively almost every day to
keep track of tasks and due dates, both for my personal life and at
work. A lot of this workflow centres around the [[https://orgmode.org/features.html#agendas][org agenda]], which
compiles all the current and upcoming tasks and due dates from several
files into a single view.

The only gripe I have with it, is that I have to be within Emacs to
use it. This isn't a deal breaker, but there were often times when I
want to check my agenda where I wasn't already in Emacs. In these
cases I had to open Emacs and pull up the agenda. This can feel a
little clunky for something I may check a dozen times every day.

The solution I came up with was a way to automatically generate and
export an HTML version of my agenda every 15 minutes on my server, in
a place where I can see it on all my devices. They are also password
protected so that strangers on the internet can't see my agenda.

The heart of this system is a small set of scripts I wrote called
[[https://github.com/dantecatalfamo/agenda-html][agenda-html]], which let you export a fully fontified view of the org
agenda to HTML without having to open Emacs in a terminal. This means
it can be easily scripted. For convenience it also has an option to
export a text-only version.

My org mode files are synchronized between my machines using a
self-hosted [[https://nextcloud.com/][Nextcloud]] instance. This means that I have access to all
my up to date org documents on a remote machine, which will come in
handy very soon.

To start setting up my automatically updating agenda, I first clone
[[https://github.com/dantecatalfamo/agenda-html][agenda-html]] onto the server which hosts my Nextcloud.

I set the input files to the location of the org files I want included
inside of the Nextcloud storage directory. This would typically be
somewhere like =/var/www/nextcloud/data/<user>/files/Org=. I set the
output for HTML and text to be =/var/www/html/agenda/agenda.html= and
=/var/www/html/agenda/agenda.txt= respectively.

I then put the =/agenda/= path behind basic auth in =nginx=.

To do this I downloaded =apache2-utils= for the =htpasswd= tool and
used it to generate an =htpasswd= file at =/etc/nginx/htpasswd=.

#+begin_src sh
htpasswd -c /etc/nginx/htpasswd <user>
#+end_src

I then opened the site's nginx config file in my text editor and
added this line.

#+begin_src conf
location /agenda {
         auth_basic "Agenda Files";
         auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/htpasswd;
}
#+end_src

Then I reloaded =nginx= using the command =nginx -s reload=.

Finally I edit root's crontab file to run =agenda-html.sh= every 15
minutes, using this line.

#+begin_src conf
*/15 * * * * /root/agenda-html/agenda-html.sh
#+end_src

Now every 15 minutes the latest version of my org files are pulled
from my Nextcloud storage and exported as an agenda, which I can
view from any device, and even set as the new tab page in my browser.