Copy tags from title to front matter template when creating new notes

[hakonhagland]

Hi. Thanks for creating this awesome plugin! I have a question. Or maybe a feature request. When I create a new note (CTRL+N), I tend to use certain tags also when typing-in the title in the text field at the top of the editor pane. I would like to have these tags automatically filled into the front matter of the new file.

I have already set up in the templater settings: “Trigger Templater on new file creation” and "Enable folder templates", where I have added a folder template that inserts a front matter into the new file. The frontmatter template might look like this:

---
aliases: 
tags: 
creation date: <% tp.file.creation_date() %>
modification date: <% tp.file.last_modified_date("dddd Do MMMM YYYY HH:mm:ss") %>
---

Currently this works fine. Except that I would also like to have the tags field in the frontmatter filled out based on what I typed in the title.

This plugin uses a function called app.metadataCache.getTags() to get the currently defined tags, so it should be possible to extract those and compare each word in the title with those to determine which of the title words is a tag.

I also see another issue that might need to be addressed. Currently templater inserts the template before I have finished typing in the title of the new note. I guess it has to wait until the user presses enter in the text field at the top of the editor pane before inserting the template. Otherwise it cannot determine the tags.

[AB1908]

You can actually use app.metadataCache.getFileCache(TFile) to get a list of metadata for the file. This should have a tags attribute IIRC. You could also just use a separate plugin called Obsidian Linter or something of the sort that "hoists" the tags to the top.

For the correct name, you could give yourself a prompt with tp.system.prompt and then use its output to tp.file.rename.

[hakonhagland]

Hi @AB1908. I do not think I understood your answer. So let me ask some questions to try clarify:

What do you mean by "hoists" the tags to the top ?

For the correct name, you could give yourself a prompt with tp.system.prompt and then use its output to tp.file.rename

Wouldn't you need to enter the title twice then? First in the prompt dialog, and then in the editor title text field? If I insert this:

<%* let file_name = await tp.system.prompt("Enter note title: ", ""); 
%>

at the top of the frontmatter template file, and then try create a new note. Then the system prompt dialog will be executed first, then the template will be populated into the editor, then focus is given to the editor title bar where it expects me to type in the title again..

I think I am missing something, because this does not seem like a good solution to me..

[AB1908]

"Hoisting to the top" is the turn of phrase I'm using to denote that you want any tags used in note contents to be populated at the top in the front matter.

I'd assumed that you'd skip entering the title the first time and let your template run instead. You may also want to look at QuickAdd or instead chain together templates where one gives you the prompt and then invokes a second template (which we actually need) and creates the file with the correct file name.

So tp.system.prompt() followed by a tp.file.create_new() which takes a template TFile as input.

[hakonhagland]

You can actually use app.metadataCache.getFileCache(TFile) to get a list of metadata for the file. This should have a tags attribute IIRC.

I think maybe you misunderstood my question? What I would like to do is to get the tags field in the frontmatter filled out based on what I typed in the title. In order to clarify, I created this small snippet:

private async insertTemplate(new_file: TFile, app: App) {
  if (new_file !== null) {
    const view = app.workspace.getActiveViewOfType(MarkdownView);
    if (view !== null) {
      // Only update blank files
      if (view.data === '') {
        const templ_file = app.vault.getAbstractFileByPath("templates/frontmatter.md");
        if (templ_file instanceof TFile) {
          let str = await app.vault.read(templ_file);
          const creation_date = window.moment(new_file.stat.ctime).format("YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm");
          str = str.replace(/<%\s+tp.file.creation_date\(\s*\)\s+%>/, creation_date);
          const last_mod_date = window.moment(new_file.stat.mtime).format("YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm");
          str = str.replace(/<%\s+tp.file.last_modified_date\(.*?\)\s+%>/, last_mod_date);
          const cache = app.metadataCache;
          const all_tags = [...Object.keys(cache.getTags())].map((p) => p.split("#").pop()) as string[];
          const title_words = new_file.basename.split(/\s+/).map(x => { return x.toLowerCase();});
          const title_tags = title_words.filter(word => {return all_tags.includes(word);});
          str = str.replace(/<%\s+tp.title.tags\(\s*\)\s+%>/, title_tags.join(", "));
          const editor = view.editor;
          const doc = editor.getDoc();
          const cursor = doc.getCursor();
          doc.replaceRange(str, cursor);
          doc.setCursor(doc.lastLine());
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

This does what I want, if I call it on a file rename event like this:

this.registerEvent(
  this.app.vault.on('rename', (file: TFile, _old_file: TFile) => { 
    this.insertTemplate(file, this.app);
  })
);

and with a frontmatter template file templates/frontmatter.md

---
aliases:
tags: <% tp.title.tags() %>
creation date: <% tp.file.creation_date() %>
modification date: <% tp.file.last_modified_date() %>
---

As you can see from the above snippets, I used an unimplemented feature <% tp.title.tags() %> in the frontmatter as hint on how I thought this could be implemented in templater. In addition there should be a hook into the rename event (instead of the create event that templater currently uses) for this tp.title.tags() to work correctly. The rename event handler would then check if the file content is empty (as shown in the above snippet) which indicates that this a new-file-creation event (not just renaming an existing note) before inserting the frontmatter.

What do you think?

[AB1908]

I don't think the dev is going to add support for listening to events but otherwise the rest of this makes sense. However, you'd have to go about this the way I described earlier:
(is pseudocode)

<%*
const fileName = tp.system.prompt("Enter file name");
if (fileName condition) {
    define tags;
} else {
    define other tags;
}
await tp.file.create_new(fileName, "tfile or other tags you want in the file");
%>