Clarification on file.create_new behaviour

[qwekjh]

I tried to make my daily notes open a weekly note if one does not already exist. I wrote this in the daily note's template:

//...
if (!tp.file.exists("name of weekly note")){
let template = tp.file.find_tfile("Weekly (Template)")
await (tp.file.create_new(template,"name of weekly note"))
}
//more commands unrelated to the weekly note...

I did not use open_new in create_new (so it defaults to false).

The problem is that every command after the create_new was appended to that new (weekly) file and not the previous (daily) file, what am I missing?

• Does the tp.file variable change to the new file created when create_new is complete?
• How should I use create_new?
  • Should I only use it as the last command of a file?
• If I remove the await, the commands are appended correctly, but I suspect it is just a race condition

[welpdx]

Hey @qwekjh, this is a great question.

According to the documentation, create_new() accepts 4 parameters, the last of which is a TFolder object that specifies the location of this new note. Because you did not provide that to the create_new() function, it defaulted to the folder of the note that the script was running in.

I unfortunately can not find an API function to get a TFolder object from path. But for your use case, maybe you can just use the create() function from the obisidian api instead.

//...
let name = "name of weekly note"
if (!tp.file.exists(name)){
let template = tp.file.find_tfile("Weekly (Template)")
let templaterContent = await this.app.vault.cachedRead(template);
await this.app.vault.create("/foo/bar/" + name +".md", templaterContent)
}
//more commands unrelated to the weekly note...

The above script should do what you wanted to do:
If file does not exist,

1. find Weekly Template,
2. extract the Template's contents,
3. creates a new file in a certain path with the specified name, and
4. The Templater Plugin should also automatically run the scripts in the Template's contents in the new file shortly after it's creation.

demo

Hope that helps.
Welp

[AB1908]

app.vault.getAbstractFileByPath seems to return a TFolder if you pass it a folder's path. Can also be obtained from TFile's parent attribute.

[AB1908]

create_new also defaults to Obsidian's setting for default new note creation IIRC.

[chuckedfromspace]

I may want to achieve something else and the method suggested by @welpdx didn't quite work for me. The new file ended up just a simple copy of the template while the tp functions were not executed. I want to use a template to create a file in a specific folder. I was able to do it with the tp.file.create_new() function (using the same example):

let name = "name of weekly note"
let path = "/foo/"
let template = tp.file.find_tfile("Weekly (Template)")
await tp.file.create_new(template, path+name)

[AB1908]

If you want to resolve templates, can use tp.file.include.