Markdown notes tagger

IMPORTANT NOTES: Please backup all your raw note files before processing with the script. Hint: use cp with -a option can preserve the original timestamps, as this answer and its comment indicated.

Feature

• Only one feature: Insert metadata headers to markdown (with .md filename extension) files

For example, the file some note.md located under /some/path/notes/ideas/some note.md with following contents

# This is a test note

some note details

will become

---
tags: [Notebooks/ideas]
title: some note
created: '2019-12-05T10:34:30+01:00'
modified: '2019-12-05T10:34:30+01:00'
---

# This is a test note

some note details

Please note that the script will preserve the modified time of the original files and use this timestamp for both the added created and modified headers.

Requirements and environments

• realpath

Has been tested under:

• Ubuntu 18.04
• GNU bash, version 4.4.20(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

Usage

Clone the repo and run the following command under the project path

./add-note-header.sh $NOTE_ROOT_PATH

where $NOTE_ROOT_PATH is the root path where note md files are stored.

e.g. (also as a test)

./add-note-header.sh ./testbed

Why do I need this tagger?

To make some markdown note applications (like the awesome Notable app) can read the notes organized as plain markdown files in such a directory structure as the testbed in this project:

testbed/
├── english-中文 空格 hybrid-name-test.md
├── notebook
│   ├── english-中文 空格 hybrid-name-test.md
│   ├── some-other-test.md
│   ├── test-header.md
│   └── 中文标题.md
├── notebook 1
│   ├── english-中文 空格 hybrid-name-test.md
│   ├── some-other-test.md
│   ├── test-header.md
│   └── 中文标题.md
├── notebook 笔记本
│   ├── english-中文 空格 hybrid-name-test.md
│   ├── some-other-test.md
│   ├── test-header.md
│   └── 中文标题.md
├── some-other-test.md
├── test-header.md
├── 中文标题.md
├── 空目录
├── 笔记本
│   ├── english-中文 空格 hybrid-name-test.md
│   ├── some-other-test.md
│   ├── test-header.md
│   └── 中文标题.md
└── 笔记本 2
    ├── english-中文 空格 hybrid-name-test.md
    ├── some-other-test.md
    ├── test-header.md
    └── 中文标题.md

I wrote a simple bash script to insert the necesary headers into each markdown files. As of now, I think, this is the least aggressive way of reorganizing the existing note files. And it makes sense to me to add these tags as metadata.