Menu-Helper

A program to manage a database of recipes and help you to pick out meals based on filters of ingredients and tags.

Usage

Ensure the XDG_DATA_HOME variable is set (e.g. to $HOME/.local/share) and that you have installed the SQLite3 library.

Upon first execution of any command, the program will automatically create the database.

Adding New Recipes

The first thing you're probably going to want to do is to add a new recipe to your database. If this database hasn't been created already then the program will do it automatically. This is done via the add subcommand, which will query you about the different attributes you want for your recipe, looking something like the following:

$ menu-helper add
Name: Linguine Scampi
Description: A lemony Italian pasta dish.
Ingredients (comma separated): linguine,shrimp,garlic,parsley,lemon
Tags (comma separated): italian,lunch
Creating database in /home/nicolas/.local/share/menu-helper/recipes.db

This will have created your recipe within the database. That last line there is merely informative, telling you that the database did not exist and it is not being created; if you had a database already and it isn't being found, ensure that your XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable is properly set.

Querying Recipes

Filtering

Once a recipe or two have been added to your database you may now query them filtering based on ingredients and tags. This is done via the list command, which takes two kinds of arguments, both optional:

• -i <list>: Comma-separated list of the ingredients to look for.
• -t <list>: Comma-separated list of the tags to look for.

If neither is specified then all recipes will be listed with their respective ID, name, and description:

$ menu-helper list
1  |  Linguine Scampi  |  A lemony Italian pasta dish.
2  |  Garlic Soup  |  A simple monastic soup for cold winters.

However, when one of these arguments is used it filters recipes to only show those which include all the ingredients and tags specified:

$ menu-helper list -i linguine
1  |  Linguine Scampi  |  A lemony Italian pasta dish.

Recipe Information

The IDs shown in the queries above now become useful for the rest of Menu-Helper functionality. If you wish to query all stored information about a given recipe, this is where you can use the info subcommand with the relevant ID:

$ menu-helper info 2
Name: Garlic Soup
Description: A simple monastic soup for cold winters.
ID: 2

Ingredients:
        - garlic
        - bread
        - egg

Tags:
        - soup
        - dinner
        - simple

Removing Recipes

If you end up desiring to remove a recipe for whatever reason, you can do so by using the del subcommand with the recipe's corresponding ID:

$ menu-helper del 2
$ menu-helper list
1  |  Linguine Scampi  |  A lemony Italian pasta dish.

Modifying Recipes

Name & Description

To correct or otherwise modify the name or description of your recipe, you can use the edit-name and edit-description subcommands. These will prompt you for the new name or description respectively and overwrite what was previously stored in the database:

$ menu-helper edit-name 1
New name: Linguine agli Scampi
$ menu-helper edit-description 1
New description: A zesty Italian pasta dish.
$ menu-helper list
1  |  Linguine agli Scampi  | A zesty Italian pasta dish.

Ingredients/Tags

If there are ingredients/tags which you forgot to add to a recipe, or that you added erringly, you can correct this with the following commands:

• add-ingr <id> <list>: Add list of comma-separated ingredients list to recipe with ID id.
• rm-ingr <id> <list>: Remove list of comma-separated ingredients list from recipe with ID id.
• add-tag <id> <list>: Add list of comma-separated tags list to recipe with ID id.
• rm-tag <id> <list>: Remove list of comma-separated tags list from recipe with ID id.

For example, we forgot to add the useful tag to our first recipe (Linguine Scampi) that it is a pasta dish. We can do this with the following command:

$ menu-helper add-tag 1 pasta
$ menu-helper info 1
Name: Linguine agli Scampi
Description: A zesty Italian pasta dish.
ID: 1

Ingredients:
        - linguine
        - shrimp
        - garlic
        - parsley
        - lemon

Tags:
        - italian
        - lunch
        - pasta

Building

To build the program you will require the following dependencies:

• A C++ compiler compatible with C++20 (preferably GCC).
• SQLite3 C/C++ library
• Make

Once installed, compile the project with the make command. To install simply run the make install command, optionally appending PREFIX=... to change the default directory of installation (i.e. /usr/local/...).

Contributing

If you find any issues, feel free to report them on GitHub or send me an E-Mail (see my website/profile for the address). I will add these issues to my personal Gitea page and (unless specified otherwise) mention you as the person who found the issue.

For patches/pull requests, if you open a PR on GitHub I will likely not merge directly but instead apply the patches locally (via Git patches, conserving authorship), push them to my Gitea repository, which will finally be mirrored to GitHub. However, you can save me a bit of work by just sending me the Git patches directly (via E-Mail).

If you're looking for a way to contribute, consider having a look at my To-Do list for the project.

License

This program is licensed under the terms & conditions of the GNU General Public License version 3 or greater. See the LICENSE file for more information.