Add daily email for 03/05/25

source/_daily_emails/2025-05-03.md

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+---
+title: A reason why I like static site generators
+date: 2025-05-03
+permalink: daily/2025/05/03/like
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - linux
+  - static-site-generators
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  Here's an example of how I use command line tools 
+---
+
+Static site generators [like Sculpin][0] don't have a database like Drupal.
+
+The files are the database.
+
+In [my website repository][3], the `source/_presentations` directory contains the files for my presentation pages, so these could be considered the presentations table and rows.
+
+But, because my content is in plain text files, they're very easy and quick to search in a text editor or on the command line using tools like `grep`.
+
+It's very easy and fast for me to find an old daily email, blog post or article I've written when I need to.
+
+This is also why I use [rst2pdf for my presentation slides][1] and write them in reStructured text. It's very fast to find and re-use content.
+
+## Counting my presentations
+
+Another example is being able to quickly count the number of presentations I've given.
+
+Here's an example of the front matter section from one of my presentations:
+
+```markdown
+events:
+  - name: PHP South West
+    date: 2024-02-14
+    location: Bristol, UK
+    urls:
+      video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axy6ltc9meA
+      demo: https://phpsw-sculpin-demo.oliverdavies.uk
+  - name: BrumPHP
+    date: 2024-05-23
+    location: Birmingham, UK
+    url: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brumphp-23rd-may-2024-tickets-803037766577
+  - name: PHP Berkshire
+    date: 2024-08-28
+    location: Reading, UK
+    urls:
+      slides: /files/presentations/sculpin/php-berkshire.pdf
+      website: https://www.meetup.com/php-berkshire/events/301850284
+  - name: PHP Thames Valley
+    date: 2026-03-20
+    location: Oxford, UK
+    urls:
+      slides: /files/presentations/sculpin/php-thames-valley.pdf
+      code: https://code.oliverdavies.uk/opdavies/sculpin-demo/src/branch/php-thames-valley
+      website: https://www.meetup.com/php-thames-valley/events/305915971
+```
+
+Each presentation has a list of events, as most presentations I've given multiple times.
+
+Each event has a `date` that I can extract with `grep`:
+
+```plain
+grep -r "date:" source/_presentations/*.md
+
+source/_presentations/tdd-test-driven-drupal.md:    date: 2020-12-08
+source/_presentations/tdd-test-driven-drupal.md:    date: 2023-10-17
+source/_presentations/tdd-test-driven-drupal.md:    date: 2024-05-10
+source/_presentations/tdd-test-driven-drupal.md:    date: 2024-11-20
+source/_presentations/test-drive-twig-with-sculpin.md:    date: 2015-07-25
+source/_presentations/things-you-should-know-about-php.md:    date: 2019-01-28
+source/_presentations/things-you-should-know-about-php.md:    date: 2022-03-09
+source/_presentations/things-you-should-know-about-php.md:    date: 2023-01-12
+source/_presentations/upgrading-your-site-drupal-9.md:    date: 2020-09-02
+source/_presentations/upgrading-your-site-drupal-9.md:    date: 2020-09-23
+source/_presentations/upgrading-your-site-drupal-9.md:    date: 2021-04-22
+source/_presentations/using-illuminate-collections-outside-laravel.md:    date: 2017-12-21
+source/_presentations/using-illuminate-collections-outside-laravel.md:    date: 2018-08-28
+source/_presentations/working-without-workspace.md:    date: 2023-04-06
+source/_presentations/working-with-workspace.md:    date: 2020-08-11
+source/_presentations/working-with-workspace.md:    date: 2020-09-09
+source/_presentations/working-with-workspace.md:    date: 2021-02-02
+```
+
+To count them, I can add `| wc -l` to count the number of lines.
+
+But what if I have presentations in the future I don't want to count?
+
+To show just the dates, I can pipe the output to `awk` and only print the last item:
+
+```plain
+grep -r "date:" source/_presentations/*.md | awk '{ print $NF }'
+
+2020-12-08
+2023-10-17
+2024-05-10
+2024-11-20
+2015-07-25
+2019-01-28
+2022-03-09
+2023-01-12
+2020-09-02
+2020-09-23
+2021-04-22
+2017-12-21
+2018-08-28
+2023-04-06
+2020-08-11
+2020-09-09
+2021-02-02
+```
+
+I can sort them by adding `| sort`, but that doesn't matter in this case.
+
+To remove any future presentations, I can pass the current date to `awk`, filter based on the date and count the number of lines in the result:
+
+```plain
+grep -r "date:" source/_presentations/*.md | awk -v today="$(date +%Y-%m-%d)" '{ if ($NF < today) print $NF }' | wc -l
+
+104
+```
+
+This isn't how I'm calculating this on my website (I'm using a [custom Twig extension in Sculpin][2] for that), but this is an example of how multiple command line utilities can work together to perform a task - made possible using the static files from my website.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/presentations/sculpin
+[1]: {{site.url}}/presentations/rst2pdf
+[2]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/05/02/extend