new-ryuslash.org/posts/20230610-0556-switch-todo-state-when-clocking-in.org

Switch TODO state when clocking in

This Emacs configuration snippet for org-mode changes a task's state from whatever “head” state it's in into the next state in its sequence when you clock in to a task. I do this by setting the org-clock-in-switch-to-state variable.

Different sequences of TODO states

First, just to make sure that this is explained in here, it's possible in org-mode to specify multiple sequences of task states, for example I had this in one of my org files:

  #+SEQ_TODO: TODO WIP BLOCKED | DONE
  #+SEQ_TODO: READ READING | FINISHED STOPPED
  #+SEQ_TODO: WATCH WATCHING | WATCHED
  #+SEQ_TODO: LISTEN LISTENING | DONE

This means that there are 4 sequences I've set up. A task can start as either TODO, READ, WATCH, or LISTEN, and then it'll move to a different next state¹ depending on which initial state was picked. WIP comes after TODO, WATCHING after WATCH, etc. They generally don't cross, although org-mode will get confused as soon as I change any TODO or LISTEN task to DONE since at that point it can't figure out what it would change back to if it turns out I wasn't done after all. It'll make it TODO if I move forward from DONE in either case.

Here is the graph showing the paths of each sequence:

Although this doesn't actually affect me at all in any way because I have org-use-fast-todo-selection set to t.

Making The Switch

Getting back to my snippet: org-clock-in-switch-to-state can be set to either a string, which will just always change it to that particular state when you clock in, or a function that takes a single parameter (the current state of the task you're clocking in to). For this case I want the function, because I won't know which state I want to change to until I know the current state, since TODO will change to WIP, READ to READING, etc. but also when a task is already in the state READING, for example, I don't want it to change at all.

  (defun oni-org-maybe-change-todo-state (current-state)
    "Change the state of the current task to its next state.
  Only do this outside of a capture buffer and when CURRENT-STATE
  is the head state of whichever sequence of states applies to this
  task."
    (if (and (not org-capture-mode)
             (member current-state org-todo-heads))
        (cadr (member current-state org-todo-keywords-1))
      current-state))

First I make sure that we're not in a capture buffer. Some of my capture templates state that they should clock in to whatever I'm capturing right away, and in that case the task I'm capturing might immediately change from TODO to WIP, for example.

Then I check to see if the current state is in the org-todo-heads variable, which contains only the first todo state of each possible sequence of states. Let's assume my todo states are:

  #+SEQ_TODO: TODO WIP BLOCKED | DONE

Checking that the current-state is in org-todo-heads basically means I check to make sure that current-state is TODO and not any of the other ones. I do this so that if I clock in to a WIP task, it doesn't automatically switch to blocked.

If I'm not in a capture buffer, and the current state is one of the head ones, I search for the current state in the org-todo-keywords-1 which is a simple flat list of all the possible todo states org-mode knows about. This is easier to work with than org-todo-keywords, since that is an alist of (type . list-of-states) and has a bunch of information I don't need. I return whatever comes right after the current state.

Returning whatever next state is in the list does mean that if the next state is DONE, it'll immediately set it to done. But there is no real way to check that with the way I've done this. There is just the next state.

Finally you just set this function as the value of org-clock-in-switch-to-state and then you're good to go.

  (setq org-clock-in-switch-to-state #'oni-org-maybe-change-todo-state)

Footnotes

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¹

By which I mean by pressing C-c C-t when org-use-fast-todo-selection is nil or pressing C-S-<right> on the headline.