Army Days (Python version)

Overview

A command-line program to display the number of days until certain events. This program (hence its name) is also based on the West Point requirement that first year cadets have to be able to recite "the days". Part of that tradition is that if it is past noon at the time, you subtract a day but add "and a butt". As most people aren't concerned about being West Point style, this is an optional feature that can be enabled via a flag. Past events can optionally be displayed via configuration.

Installing as a CLI Tool

For regular usage, it's useful to install the program using either pipx or uv tool or just run directly with uvx.

Usage

Example output

❯ army-days
 Days
89 days until Army beats the hell out of Navy.
100 days until Christmas.

Help

Once installed, you can run the command with the --help option.

❯ army-days --help
Usage: army-days [-f FILENAME] [-g] [-p SHOW_PAST] [-a] [-h] [-v]

  day countdown program (python edition)

  Options
    [-f, --filename FILENAME]    configuration file; by default searches:
                                 ./days.yaml ./days.json ~/days.yaml
                                 ~/days.json ~/.days.yaml ~/.days.json.
    [-g, --generate-sample]      generate sample data in yaml format (sends to
                                 stdout).
    [-p, --show-past SHOW_PAST]  show past events within the past N days (use 0
                                 to show all past events).
    [-a, --show-all]             show all future events, bypassing
                                 max_days_future config limit.

  Help
    [-h, --help]                 Show this message and exit.
    [-v, --version]              Show the version and exit.

Configuration / Input file

By default (as the help indicates), army-days looks for a configuration file in this order:

• days.yaml or days.json in the current working directory.
• days.yaml or days.json in the user's home directory.
• .days.yaml or .days.json in the user's home directory.

You can override the name of the configuration file via the -f / --filename option.

Sample Configuration File Generation

To generate a sample configuration file:

army-days -g > days.yaml

The sample file will look similar to this:

config:
  show_completed: false
  use_army_butt_days: false
entries:
- date: '2025-09-15T00:00:00'
  title: your one year anniversary of using army-days
- alwaysShow: true
  date: '2024-09-15T00:00:00'
  showPastLimit: 400
  title: example always-shown event (e.g., 'broke my leg')

Showing Past Events

Army-days provides multiple ways to display past events:

Command-line option

Use the -p / --show-past option to show past events. It always takes an integer day-limit; pass 0 to show all past events:

# Show all past events
army-days --show-past 0

# Show only past events within the last 365 days
army-days --show-past 365

Per-event configuration

You can configure individual events to always show, even if they're in the past, by using the alwaysShow and showPastLimit options:

entries:
- date: '2024-06-01'
  title: broke my leg
  alwaysShow: true
  showPastLimit: 400  # Only show if within the past 400 days

• alwaysShow: When set to true, this event will always be displayed, regardless of the global show_completed setting
• showPastLimit: Optional limit (in days) for how far in the past to show this event. If omitted, the event will always show regardless of how long ago it occurred

Global configuration

You can also set show_completed: true in the config section to always show all past events:

config:
  show_completed: true

Development

This project uses uv for dependency management and virtual environment management.

uv python install
uv sync

Running tests

For basic tests with coverage:

uv run pytest --cov

And for tests with coverage and more verbose output also allowing stdout:

uv run pytest --cov -v -s

Running the program

uv run army-days