Create a _recent documents_ search CLI

Here’s a simple command-line interface (CLI) in Python to search for recent documents in a given directory, sorted by modification time, and filtered optionally by keyword and file type:

python
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import os
import argparse
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

def find_recent_files(directory, days, keyword=None, filetypes=None, limit=10):
    current_time = datetime.now()
    recent_files = []

    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
        for file in files:
            if filetypes and not any(file.endswith(ext) for ext in filetypes):
                continue
            if keyword and keyword.lower() not in file.lower():
                continue

            file_path = os.path.join(root, file)
            try:
                mod_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(os.path.getmtime(file_path))
                if mod_time >= current_time - timedelta(days=days):
                    recent_files.append((file_path, mod_time))
            except Exception as e:
                print(f"Error accessing {file_path}: {e}")

    # Sort by most recent modification time
    recent_files.sort(key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)

    return recent_files[:limit]

def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Search for recent documents in a directory.')
    parser.add_argument('directory', help='Directory to search in')
    parser.add_argument('--days', type=int, default=7, help='Number of days to look back')
    parser.add_argument('--keyword', help='Keyword to search in file names')
    parser.add_argument('--filetypes', nargs='+', help='List of file extensions to include (e.g. .txt .docx .pdf)')
    parser.add_argument('--limit', type=int, default=10, help='Max number of results to show')

    args = parser.parse_args()
    results = find_recent_files(args.directory, args.days, args.keyword, args.filetypes, args.limit)

    if results:
        print(f"nRecent files in the last {args.days} days:n")
        for path, mod_time in results:
            print(f"{mod_time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')} - {path}")
    else:
        print("No recent files found.")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Example Usage

bash
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python recent_docs_cli.py /home/user/Documents --days 5 --keyword report --filetypes .txt .pdf --limit 20

This will search for recent .txt and .pdf files with “report” in the name, modified within the last 5 days, limited to 20 results.

Let me know if you’d like it packaged as an installable CLI tool (e.g., using setuptools or Typer).