🦀 Rust Todo CLI

A colorful, multi-list command-line todo app — built from scratch while learning Rust.

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What is this?

A command-line todo list, built chapter-by-chapter while working through The Rust Programming Language — and by the end, a genuinely useful everyday tool, not just a tutorial exercise. It went from a 5-minute Vec<Task> prototype to a persisted, multi-list, color-coded CLI with its own installable binary.

╭──────────────────────────────────╮
│      🦀 RUST TODO CLI 🦀         │
╰──────────────────────────────────╯
Type help for the list of commands.

╭─ All tasks (3)
╭─────┬───────────┬──────────────────╮
│ ID  │ Status    │ Description      │
├─────┼───────────┼──────────────────┤
│ 1   │ [x] Done  │ Set up project   │
│ 2   │ [~] Doing │ Write the tests  │
│ 3   │ [ ] Todo  │ Ship it          │
╰─────┴───────────┴──────────────────╯

✨ Features

• 📝 Basic todo list — add, complete, remove, mark in-progress, filter by status
• 🗂️ Multi-list board — organize tasks into named lists (e.g. "Work", "Personal"), with tasks that can be shared across lists (complete it in one place, it's done everywhere)
• 💾 Persistent — everything saves to JSON automatically, reloads on startup
• 🎨 Styled CLI — bordered tables, color-coded status, strikethrough for done tasks
• 🌍 Works from anywhere — install it once, run todo_list from any folder on your system
• ✅ Tested — unit tests covering core logic and edge cases
• 📚 Documented — full rustdoc comments, browsable as HTML

🚀 Quick start

Install it as an everyday command:

git clone https://github.com/LoicPil/rust-todo-cli.git
cd rust-todo-cli
cargo install --path .

Then run it from anywhere:

todo_list

Your data lives in ~/.todo_cli/, independent of wherever you launch the program from.

Or just run it locally (for development)

cargo run

📖 Commands

Basic list

Command	Description
add <desc>	add a new task
done <id>	mark a task done
remove <id>	remove a task
progress <id>	mark a task in progress
list	show all tasks
filter <todo|done|inprogress>	show tasks with a given status

Multi-list board

Command	Description
bcreate <list>	create an empty list
badd <list> <desc>	add a task directly into a list
bdone <id>	mark a board task done (visible in every list it's in)
bprogress <id>	mark a board task in progress
blists	show every list's name
blist <list>	show tasks in a list
ball	show every list, each with its own header, in one go
bassign <id> <list>	share an existing task into another list
bunassign <id> <list>	remove a task from one list only
bremove <id>	remove a task entirely, from every list
bdelete <list>	delete a whole list (unassigns its tasks first)
bwhere <id>	show which lists contain a task

Other

Command	Description
help / ?	show the help menu
quit	save and exit

🧠 What this project demonstrates

Built as a deliberate tour through Rust's core concepts, chapter by chapter:

Concept	Where
Structs & enums	Task, Status
Pattern matching	Command parsing, the main REPL loop
Modules	task / todo_list / board / main
Collections	HashMap<u32, Task>, HashSet<u32>
Error handling	TodoError, Result<(), TodoError> throughout
Generics & traits	Display impls, PartialEq, Clone
Automated tests	unit tests across every module
Iterators & closures	.filter(), .sort_by_key(), .map()
Smart pointers	Rc<RefCell<Task>> for cross-list task sharing
Serialization	serde + serde_json for JSON persistence

🛠️ Development

cargo test                    # run the test suite
cargo doc --no-deps --open    # generate & view HTML docs
cargo install --path . --force  # rebuild and reinstall after changes

🗺️ Roadmap & history

See RoadMap.md for the chapter-by-chapter build plan, and CHANGELOG.md for a full history of what shipped when.

The core project is considered stable at v1.0.0. Chapter 16 (concurrency — a background auto-save thread) remains an optional future addition.

📄 License

MIT — do what you want with it.

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Built by Loïc Pilette while learning Rust, one chapter at a time.