Events: filter events based on variable (like {{event_file_name}} before passing to shell

[thomasvs]

I have a command that runs an external command to update a panel message whenever I change my "My Daily Reminders.md" file. I use the File Modified event, but it runs on any file modified, which means obsidian is constantly spawning shells as I type. It would be great to avoid that by adding a filter to events based on the variable content.

[Taitava]

Hi,

thank you for your suggestion! 🙂

I think there are two solutions that could work together:

1. In your shell command, you can use an if block to only call the external command if the modified file was My Daily Reminders.md. I'm not certain if your shell is Bash, but here's a Bash example anyway:

   if [ {{event_file_name}} = "My Daily Reminders.md" ]
   then
       echo "Call the external command here."
   fi

2. To reduce the times shells are spawned unnecessarily when editing files, there is a feature called event debouncing, which is still under development, but can be beta tested already. It prevents executing a shell command if an event has just executed it a short time ago.

---

As for the actual feature request about bringing conditions to event execution, I have thought about the idea in the past (but probably never written about it) and came up to a conclusion it's not so beneficial compared to the effort it would require:

• Conditions can be made in the shell command itself, and they support flexible syntax for advanced conditions (e.g. and/or operators with parenthesed conditions, and conditions based on an external program's result) that would be relatively hard to implement in the SC plugin.
• Having conditions in the SC plugin would create a competing feature which would not bring enough benefits to justify the development effort.

This is my stand at the moment. However, I do appreciate that you brought up this suggestion! 🙂