Project Notes in Obsidian

As I noted in a previous post, I’ve been using Obsidian for personal note taking and whatnot. I swear by using the Templater plugin, and I have setups for note taking for meetings and check-ins with students.

I recently formalized something that I do in all of them, which makes it a lot easier to set up. For instance, my meeting-notes template looks like this:

<%*
let projectName = await tp.user.helpfulPrompt(tp, "project", "#projects", "Project Name?");
let slugName = tp.user.slugger(projectName);
-%>
---
fileClass: meeting-notes
aliases: ["<% projectName %>-meeting-<% tp.date.now() %>"]
tags:
 - notes
 - meeting
 - projects/<% projectName %>
project: <% projectName %>
created: <% tp.date.now() %>
modified: <% tp.date.now() %>
date: <% tp.date.now() %>
attendees:
 - Matt Turk
 - ...
title: Notes - <% projectName %> - <% tp.date.now() %>
---

# Notes - <% projectName %> - <% tp.date.now() %>

## Agenda and Notes

1. start
2. ...

## Action Items

Use the metadata `assigned` like `(assigned:: Matt Turk)` in these.

 - [ ] 

## Other
<% await tp.user.safeRenamer(tp, "projects/" + projectName, slugName + " - notes - " + tp.date.now()) %>

and my check-in template looks like this:

<%*
let personName = await tp.user.helpfulPrompt(tp, "student", "#student", "Student Name?");
let slugName = tp.user.slugger(personName);
-%>
---
aliases:  []
student: <% personName %>
tags:
 - student/<% slugName %>
 - students/checkin 
modified: <% tp.date.now() %>
created: <% tp.date.now() %>
title: <% personName %> - Checkin - <% tp.date.now() %>
---

# <% personName %> - Checkin - <% tp.date.now() %>

## Discussion

## Notes

## Action Items

<% await tp.file.move("projects/students/" + slugName + "/"
        + personName + " - Checkin - " + tp.date.now()) %>

I’ve set up a couple functions in user scripts that make things a lot easier for me. (I just now noticed I don’t use safeRenamer in my check-in template, though, and I’ll have to fix that.)

Because I have metadata tags for project: and student: in the frontmatter of these templates, I can do some searching to provide an autocomplete for existing values, and also allow for new values to be added.

Here’s my safeRenamer script, which honestly I’m not sure is exactly the right one to use, but which is working for me:

async function safeRenamer(tp, newFolder, newFilename) {
    if (!(await app.vault.exists(newFolder))) {
        await app.vault.createFolder(newFolder);
    }
    var newFullpath = `${newFolder}/${newFilename}.md`;
    var exists = await tp.file.exists(newFullpath);
    if (exists) {
        for (let i =1; i <= 100; i++) {
            newFullpath = `${newFolder}/${newFilename} - ${i}.md`;
            exists = await tp.file.exists(newFullpath);
            if (!exists) break;
        }
    }
    // We now have a newFullpath that probably includes the .md extension.
    // But, we don't want obsidian to use that.
    if (newFullpath.endsWith(".md")) {
        newFullpath = newFullpath.slice(0, -3);
    }
    return tp.file.move(newFullpath);
}

module.exports = safeRenamer;

And, this set of functions helps me figure out what already exists to provide a set of options, as well as allowing for a new value to be added. Here is frontmatterKeyValues.js:

// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1960473/get-all-unique-values-in-a-javascript-array-remove-duplicates
function onlyUnique(value, index, array) {
    return array.indexOf(value) === index;
}

async function frontmatterKeyValues(key, selectionTag) {
    const dv = app.plugins.plugins["dataview"].api;
    if (!selectionTag.startsWith("#")) selectionTag = `#${selectionTag}`;
    keyValues = dv.pages(selectionTag).filter( p => p[key] ).map( p => p[key] ).filter(onlyUnique);
    return keyValues.array();
}

module.exports = frontmatterKeyValues;

and, finally, helpfulPrompt.js:

const OTHER = "Other";

async function helpfulPrompt(tp, key, tag, header) {
    let knownValues = await tp.user.frontmatterKeyValues(key, tag);
    knownValues.push(OTHER);
    let selectedValue = await tp.system.suggester(knownValues, knownValues, true);
    if (selectedValue === OTHER) {
        selectedValue = await tp.system.prompt("Use which value?", "", true);
    }
    return selectedValue;
}

module.exports = helpfulPrompt;

I also wrote this up (tagLeafFinder.js), but have not yet used it, for identifying stem values in keys:

async function tagLeafFinder(stemTag) {
    if (!stemTag.startsWith("#")) stemTag = `#${stemTag}`;
    if (!stemTag.endsWith("/")) stemTag = `${stemTag}/`;
    const tags = Object.keys( app.metadataCache.getTags() ).filter( t => t.startsWith(stemTag) );
    return tags;
}

module.exports = tagLeafFinder

Now, whenever I start a project meeting, I hit Alt-n and choose the project from the (on-the-fly-generated) list, and I get my meeting notes. And, dataview query in my overview page tells me all the todo items assigned to me across all meeting notes.