Define org-roam-dailies-capture-templates content in files, not string literals

Troubleshooting
1

Hello,

I’m trying to define my org-roam-dailies-capture-template in a file, rather than in a string.

Here’s my current set up, using a string, that works:

(use-package org-roam-dailies
  :after org-roam
  :ensure t
  :bind-keymap ("C-c n d" . org-roam-dailies-map)
  :config

  (setq org-roam-dailies-capture-templates
        '(("d" "default" plain "%?"
           :target (file+head "%<%Y-%m-%d>.org"
                              "#+title: %<%Y-%m-%d %A>\n")))))

If I change the last clause to

(setq org-roam-dailies-capture-templates
        '(("d" "default" plain (file "/path/to/my/template.org")
           :target (file "%<%Y-%m-%d>.org"))))

Then when I capture a daily (via org-roam-dailies-goto-today) I get a blank org-roam file with a properties file and no errors or anything interesting in the *Messages* buffer.

Relatedly, I’m also very confused by the relationship between the template string and the “head” content when using file+head.

I looked up Dailies capture templates best practices before post this, but couldn’t connect the post & its replies to the problem I’m seeing.

My goal is to have an extended daily self-check in thing in my daily template.

I’m using org-roam version 20230307.1721.

2

I suggest you try org-roam-dailies-capture-today instead of go-to-today. You should immediately see a different behaviour. To test, I’d either change the name of the file for today, or delete it and start from scratch.

Somehow, it feels to me that dailies-capture is meant to be used to create a new journal file for the first thing in the day; dailies-goto-today is to navigate to the one you have already created to continue to work on it.

The head part of file+head is rather literally the “header” part of the file – so it is added once when the file is created. That’s why the title with the date is set there in the default (the default is one file per day, so the title aligns with this).

This default set up with head makes sense when you use entry instead of plain – because entry in this case is a headline in org’s parlance. The design is supposed to be that you would create a multiple entries (headline with text body) in the course of the day in the same one file – one head, multiple entries.

When you use plain instead of entry, you may not need head – but this depends on the content of your template file and your workflow for journaling.

Just to give you an example:

(setq org-roam-dailies-capture-templates
      '(("d" "default" entry "* This is an entry of the day \n%?" :target
	 (file+head "%<%Y-%m-%d>.org" "#+title: %<%Y-%m-%d>"))))

With this setup, if you do org-roam-dailies-capture-today you will get something like this below in the screen capture. With entry, the capture creates a new entry each time. See the first and second entries with the same heading “* This is an entry of the day”. And the head adds the title only once, so the second and subsequent captures do not add a new title to the file each time – that should be what you want.

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Now… You seem to prefer to use the template text file. That is a good method. But you might need to begin the file with a headline like my example if you use entry. Or alternatively, you might be happy with plain and get the whole file content to be added to your daily journal. This might work, but be careful. Because the whole file content will be added with each capture so you might repeat the title, etc. every time. If you see yourself calling capture many times a day, then you should consider head with file+head. Or use plain and define another capture template targeting at a specific headline, etc. This depends on your journaling workflow.

If you decide to use head, one more thing: I don’t think head accepts file "dir/to/file" syntax, so you would want to directly add the text in the capture-templates list.

I hope this makes sense.

– nobiot

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