Hi, I have managed some fancy ways to create new rich notes in Obsidian with YAML data and templater, what I can’t find anywhere it’s a way to retrieve data from Obsidian:
I have made 2 iOS shortcuts (Still don’t have a Mac helas!): one for Podcasts and one for Youtube videos so I can reference back to the exact timestamp, add comments and formatting in a fancy way all the notes I want to capture in Obsidian and restart the viewing/listening exactly from where I left or some seconds before capturing thoughts at the speed of light even triggering the Shorcuts by voice while taking shower, driving, doing errands, etc ect.
To further upgrade the automation, instead of adding manually in Obsidian notes ex-post and move to the relevant folder the new notes created, I would like to integrate some Choose From List options to parse into the Shortcut if I need to.
In particular I would like to retrieve via callback-urls in Shortcuts the list of all tags and folders in my vault so I can choose from list inside my shortcuts to select the relevant tags and where to save a new automatic captured note.
Can you give me some advice, I wasn’t able to find any GET option in the Obsidian URI Documentation.
Thank you in advance for your help, and Happy 2023!
Giacomo.
I don’t believe that there is a URL call to do what you are asking.
From what I’ve seen, automations tend to either process all the files in the vault themselves to identify tags, or apply a requirement of the metadata extractor plugin and then read from the exported JSON file for tags from that plugin.
As for folders, same things go, though for the plugin, it is exported as part of another file (non-Markdown) rather than its own file.
Hope that helps,
Thank you for the tip but unfortunately the plugin you suggested it’s not supported on iOS and PadOS devices I am using with Shortcuts.
As Folders are actual file folders in the vault maybe I can at least retrieve a list of them to choose from list.
But Tags are a different kind of problem to extract from Obsidian.
Thank you
I realised today while reviewing some plugin related stuff that there *is* now a way to do it by URL call, and I just confirmed it all works on my iPad.
There’s a new Shortcuts helper app in development (I applied to be on the beta, but don’t have access yet), and it’s sort of a binary solution. At least some of the data the app will be designed to access is available through it communicating with its own Obsidian plugin.
It looks like the plugin communications are based around x-callback-url, and so you can still access the plugin without the app. And, as you might have guessed, it meets your needs.
Here I created a quick demo vault with a couple of tags (I don’t really have much need for tags in my usual vaults), and a small folder tree to test with.
First off, I retrieved a list of the (two) tags I used in the vault with a simple shortcut.
Next, I modified the URL and retrieved the folders.
Note, this includes nested folders too, not just the root level folders.
The plugin is in the community plugins directory in Obsidian, and is called “Actions URI”. The plugin readme contains links to the documentation, etc.
Hope that helps.
Perfect!!! It works like charm!!!
Thank you for the suggestion.
