Code block command

[osmiumforge]

A useful feature would be the ability to run a command on the contents of a fenced code block (based on the language set) and render the output, so that the input can be edited and automatically updated

[Taitava]

Thank you for your suggestion! 🙂

The way I see this, there could be a new {{variable}} named e.g. {{code_block}}, which could have two choices:

• {{code_block:content}}: Get the actual code of the first fenced code block on the currently active note file.
• {{code_block:language}} Get whatever text part is placed at the first line after ```. (Or: {{code_block:type}})

For example, you could have this kind of note file:

My note content before code.

```bash
echo "Hello world!"
```

Note content after code.

And you could have a shell command like this:

{{code_block:language}} -c {{code_block:content}}

When executed, it would become:

bash -c \"Hello\ world\!\"

[Taitava]

Anyway, there are some other plugins that execute code blocks:

• https://obsidian.md/plugins?id=code-emitter
• https://obsidian.md/plugins?id=snippets

I haven't tried these myself.

[Taitava]

and render the output

Hmm, I do see the usefulnes of having an output element next to the code block. It's just that there might be quite a lot of work to achieve that. Perhaps something like this could work: (this just demonstrates an idea, it's not implemented)

My note content before code.

```bash
echo "Hello world!"
```

```shell-commands-output
AFancyNameForMyOutputContainer
```

Then in a shell command's settings, one could define that stdout/stderr (or both) output should go to an Output container named AFancyNameForMyOutputContainer in the currently active file.

Need to consider if the output should be either:

• permanently stored (i.e. could be seen again after restarting Obsidian without re-executing the shell command. This would modify the note file's content), or
• temporarily visible. Closing Obsidian would discard the output. Good if user doesn't want their note file to be tampered with.