Obsidian Templater: creating multiple files based on a folder of reference files with string interpolation

[stone]

I don’t know if this is too Obsidian-plugin-specific for this forum, but since a lot of the code here is based on examples from the fabulous website of @sylumer, and since Automators is the reason I got into Obsidian, I thought I’d cross-post to the Automators forum. I hope that’s not frowned upon.

Things I have tried

Apologies for a long-winded post. I hope the examples are understandable. I’m not a programmer, i just dabble in code I don’t 100% understand, which is probably the reason why I can’t do what I want. And maybe there is a much simpler/better way to do what I’m trying to accomplish?

Searching the forum

I have tried searching the forum, but I don’t really know what the right tool is to solve my problem, so I don’t know what to search for…

Scripting attempt 1: external JS-files loaded by Templater

+ this works on OSX
- does not work on iOS
- template literal string looks a bit messy inside the loop in the script
- annoying to maintain template text within the script and not within Obsidian

Scripting attempt 2: defining template with template literals within loop

+ this works on OSX and iOS
- looks very messy in Obsidian with the template literal strings nested inside loop
- hard to maintain and update the template text

Example script:

<%*
    const folder = "/referenceFolder"
    const destination = "/destinationFolder"
    let listOfFiles = await app.metadataCache.vault.adapter.list(folder);
	listOfFiles.files.forEach(file => {
		// get fileName from path - lazy, regex would be better...
		let fileName = file.slice(-9, -4)
		// this is the messy part:
		let text = `---
yaml-stuff: goes here
---
# ${fileName}
text, blah blah
`
		if (!tp.file.exists(fileName)) {
			app.vault.create(destination + fileName +".md", text);
		} else {
			// don't create a file...
		}
	});
%>

Scripting attempt 3: storing template literals in a separate Templater template

potential:
+ reusable, expandable,
+ clean, easy-to-read templates that are easy to maintain

I can’t seem to control the type of string Templater/obsidian API serves when reading a template file, so the string interpolation never happens, and I end up with the actual ${variable}-text in the output. In short: I don’t really know how to make this work…

TEMPLATE FILE

# ${title}
foo bar baz

I know this is not going to work, just wanted to show the idea:

SCRIPT TEMPLATE FILE

<%* 
	let template = "Template File"
	let title = "My amazing title"
	let text = await tp.file.find_tfile(template);
	// Next part would go inside the loop
	app.vault.create(destination + fileName +".md", text);
%>

Output:

CREATED FILE

# ${title} // no string interpolation here :(
foo bar baz

Scripting attempt 4: defining template outside of loop, referencing variables in loop

- only slightly better than attempt 2

similar to the problem with attempt 3: string interpolation does not work because the text template is evaluated first, and the ${variables} are evaluated to undefined

Example script:

<%*
const folder = "/referenceFolder";
const destination = "/destinationFolder";
	let fileName;
	let text = `---
yaml
---
# ${fileName}
foo bar baz
`
	
    let listOfFiles = await app.metadataCache.vault.adapter.list(folder);
	listOfFiles.files.forEach(file => {
		// get fileName from path - lazy, regex would be better...
		let fileName = file.slice(-9, -4)
		if (!tp.file.exists(fileName)) {
			app.vault.create(destination + fileName +".md", text);
		} else {
			// don't create a file...
		}
	});
%>

Output:

---
yaml
---
# undefined
foo bar baz

What I’m trying to do

I want to:

• create multiple new notes from a template with some unique string replacement
• the amount of files created is equal to amount of reference files in another folder
• string replacement is based on filenames of reference files

Example:

referenceFolder/
---file1.pdf
---file2.pdf
---file3.pdf

I want to create:

destinationFolder/
---file1.md
---file2.md
---file3.md

So that file1.md would look like this:

# File1
Some text here
![[file1.pdf]]
Next file is here: [[file2.pdf]]

[stone]

Hmmm…

Since I’m replacing multiple instances of a simple string, maybe string.replace() with some regex is the way to go?

Any other ideas? Are there any easier ways to accomplish what I want?

[sylumer]

Glad you like my stuff. Let’s see if this helps.

I created an Obsidian vault to try putting something together and populated it with a few files:

• The PDF files in the referenceFolder are just some arbitrary PDFs for demo purposes.
• The _Main.md is just supposed to be some arbitrary note, and is where I am when I use the Templater template.
• Some Template.md contains the base content for the new files to be created in the destinationFolder.
• T.TST1.md is the Templater template, and Templater has been configured to reference the Templates folder for templates.

The two template files are what is of note here:

Content: Some Template.md

This is the content read in to use for the output of the new files. The use of {{title}} was arbitrary as I just used it as a placeholder.

--- 

yaml

--- 

[[{{title}}]]

  

foo bar baz

Content: T.TST1.md

This is just you final template with some revisions to deal with variable scope and a text substitution. Forgive the variable renaming and reformatting, it just helps me track what’s what.

<%* 
// Define Constants
const REFERENCE = "/referenceFolder"; 
const DESTINATION = "/destinationFolder"; 
const NOTETEMPLATE = "Some Template"; 

// Get the template content
let fTemplate = await tp.file.find_tfile(NOTETEMPLATE);
let strTemplateContent = await app.vault.read(fTemplate);

// Get reference file list and make a new note for each if one does not already exist
let astrListOfFiles = await app.metadataCache.vault.adapter.list(REFERENCE); 
astrListOfFiles.files.forEach(file => 
{ 
	// Set file names and content
	let strReferenceName = file.substring(REFERENCE.length);
	let strName = file.substring(REFERENCE.length, file.lastIndexOf('.')) + ".md";
	let strContent = strTemplateContent.replaceAll("{{title}}", strReferenceName);

	// File does not exist, so create it
	if (!tp.file.exists(strName)) app.vault.create(DESTINATION + "/" + strName, strContent);
});
%>

When run the result looks like this:

Which I think gives you a few steps forward on what you were after and just leaves you the next file element to figure out.

Hope that helps.

[stone]

It’s amazing how much more elegant the solution is when you know what you’re doing! This is very helpful and informative. Thank you so much! Looking forward to refactoring my hackish code…