Automatically clocking into parent items

[Aankhen <aankhen@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I’ve been working on getting org-mode to automatically clock into an
item’s ancestor when clocking out of that item.  The way I have it set
up now, it walks up the tree looking for an item that has a particular
property set.  If that property is non-nil, it clocks in; if it’s nil,
it doesn’t.  Either way, it stops looking at that point.  Here’s what
I have so far:

,----[ Conditionally resuming parent clocks ]
| (defconst +aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-property+ "AUTO_RESUME_CLOCK"
|   "The name of the property that indicates whether a task's clock
|   should be restarted upon clocking out of its subtasks.  When
|   this is not `nil' according to `org-not-nil', the task's clock
|   will be restarted.")
|
| (defun aankh/maybe-resume-parent-clock ()
|   (save-excursion
|     (loop
|      until (= (org-current-level) 1)
|      do (org-up-heading-all 1)
|      when (member +aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-property+
|                   (mapcar 'car (org-entry-properties)))
|      do (let ((resume
|                (org-entry-get
|                 nil
|                 +aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-property+)))
|           (when (org-not-nil resume)
|             (org-clock-in))
|           (return resume)))))
|
| (setq aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-enable t)
|
| (defun aankh/read-resume-parent-clock-property (&rest rest)
|   (declare (ignore rest))
|   (org-icompleting-read
|    "Automatically restart this task's clock when clocking out of a subtask? "
|    '("t" "nil")))
|
| (when aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-enable
|   (add-hook 'org-clock-out-hook 'aankh/maybe-resume-parent-clock)
|   (add-to-list 'org-default-properties
|                +aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-property+)
|   (add-to-list 'org-property-set-functions-alist
|                `(,+aankh/org-resume-parent-clock-property+
|                  . aankh/read-resume-parent-clock-property)))
`----

So given this structure:

,----[ example.org ]
| * Foo
|
| * Bar
|   :PROPERTIES:
|   :AUTO_RESUME_CLOCK: t
|   :END:
|
| *** Quux
|     :PROPERTIES:
|     :AUTO_RESUME_CLOCK: t
|     :END:
|
| ***** Frob
|
| * Baz
`----

When I clock out of ‘Frob’, I’m automatically clocked into ‘Quux’, and
when I clock out of ‘Quux’, I’m automatically clocked into ‘Bar’.
This works pretty well, except for one problem: it happens *every
time* I clock out, meaning that if I’m clocked into ‘Quux’ and I then
hit C-c C-x C-i on ‘Frob’, I end up being clocked into both ‘Bar’ and
‘Frob’, because I’m automatically clocked out of ‘Quux’; my code is
run, clocking me into ‘Bar’; and then the normal clocking mechanism
clocks me into ‘Frob’ (at least, I *think* the hook runs first).

I guess what I’m wondering is, what’s a good way to avoid this
double-clocking?  And while I’m asking for help, can anyone think of
some less obnoxious names for the functions, variables and property?
:-)

I hope all this makes sense.  Thanks for your time.

Aankhen