[Help] Shell Commands with JS scripts #73

FelipeRearden · 2021-10-11T12:29:24Z

FelipeRearden
Oct 11, 2021

Hello @Taitava !!!!!!!

I have no idea if SC could help me with this workflow but I decide to ask you.

Forgive if what I'm asinkg does not make any sense :)

Here is my Situation

Frequently, I import to Obsidian from iOS (more about this here in the forum) a bunch of URL that will be used inside Obsidian.

Save some URL from artciles that I want to read/highlight/work inside Obsidian;
URL from my Podcast App (Airr App) that generates a bunch of URL with the highlights from one episode that I'm listening. more about this workflow here in this Git

To summarize: I have URL inside an Obsidian Note that I want to transform to .md text inside Obsidian

Actual Workflow to do this

To do this today I'm using the Obsidian Web Clipper Bookmarklet created by from our community friends - link here

My attempt to explain what the boommarklet do:

it is a js script that is saved as a Safari bookmark;
it grabs all content from the URL, export to markdown and creates a new note in a specific folder (defined in the js script) in Obsidian with the content in markdown .

This is the gist for the script: https://gist.github.com/kepano/90c05f162c37cf730abb8ff027987ca3

Running this URL https://www.airr.io/quote/60153afa030ce32f95173a18 creates this new note in Obsidian

Another option is the plugin EXTRACT URL CONTENT that do automatic what the Bookmarkelt does usind Safari:

Unfortunately it does not work well with 70% of my URL's :(

My Help Request

@Taitava, do you think is it possible to use SC to use/open the js script with out having to go to Safari?

save the code as a .js file in my computer and create a SC command to execute the .js with the URL in the {{selection}} or {{clipboard}}

Am I crazy about asking this??????

I'm not 100% about this, but I wanna know if is something feasible :)

Have a great day and thanks for reading this :)

Answered by Taitava

Oct 12, 2021

Really interesting workflow! 🙂

@Taitava, do you think is it possible to use SC to use/open the js script with out having to go to Safari?
* save the code as a .js file in my computer and create a SC command to execute the `.js` with the URL in the {{selection}} or {{clipboard}}

There's a couple of things I'm not sure about:

Can this be done without opening a web browser.
Can JavaScript files be executed directly. Sure, I guess there might be some programs that can execute JS files without opening a browser, but then again, I'm not sure if they provide the same features a web browser would provide for JavaScript, e.g. the ability to load webpages.

I think we might have two options (at…

View full answer

Taitava · 2021-10-12T06:39:55Z

Taitava
Oct 12, 2021
Maintainer

Really interesting workflow! 🙂

@Taitava, do you think is it possible to use SC to use/open the js script with out having to go to Safari?
* save the code as a .js file in my computer and create a SC command to execute the `.js` with the URL in the {{selection}} or {{clipboard}}

There's a couple of things I'm not sure about:

Can this be done without opening a web browser.
Can JavaScript files be executed directly. Sure, I guess there might be some programs that can execute JS files without opening a browser, but then again, I'm not sure if they provide the same features a web browser would provide for JavaScript, e.g. the ability to load webpages.

I think we might have two options (at least) here. I will first cover an option that does not use obsidian-web-clipper.js at all, but after that I will try to modify that option so that obsidian-web-clipper.js gets included.

1. option

At Least on Linux there is a command named wget, and I guess it can be installed on Mac, too. It downloads webpages (or other files) and outputs them to stdout - or to a file. Now, let's see how we can use it:

Create a new shell command: wget {{selection}} -O -. -O - tells the program to output to stdout instead of into a file.
Define the output channel to be Current file: caret position. (Or use -O MyNote.md or -O MyPage.html if you want to create a new file).
Now you have a really, really basic level web page downloader that replaces the currently selected URL with the webpage's content. If you don't want to lose the URL, then use {{clipboard}} instead of {{selection}} like you mentioned above.
BUT: This method has a huge disadvantage: it brings everything from the webpage to your note: navigation bars and other structures are included. The result will be ugly and requires you to manually delete stuff.
You can try to come up with a regular expression that would take only a subset of the downloaded HTML into your note: wget {{selection}} | grep <body>.*?</body> . But then again, HTML cannot be parsed with regular expressions - at least not very well, so do not use too much energy for this or you will lose your mind.

2. option

I don't really know if this would work, and I haven't tried it myself (well, actually I did not even try the first option either). This is just pseudo code that might work, or maybe not.

Edit our wget command to store the downloaded webpage in a file: wget {{selection}} -O temporary-file.html.

We need to insert the following text into the file we just downloaded:

<script type="text/javascript">
    /* Put here the JavaScript content from https://gist.github.com/kepano/90c05f162c37cf730abb8ff027987ca3/raw/0406f34aa96c54bd66c02bf61ac556474345864c/obsidian-web-clipper.js 
   BUT remove the javascript: prefix. */
</script>

The above HTML text (well, actually it's mostly JavaScript, but wrapped in HTML) should be inserted into temporary-file.html, right before a closing </body> tag near the end of the file. I do not know which command can do this, maybe sed? So I'll let it for you to find out which command does this.
Then we need to make our command to open temporary-file.html in a web browser. I don't know the exact command for Mac, but maybe safari temporary-file.html?
Combine all these commands together: wget {{selection}} -O temporary-file.html && THE INSERT COMMAND && safari temporary-file.html.

To be honest, I have no clue if it's possible to make this work. As I'm not familiar with obsidian-web-clipper.js, I'd suggest you to ask help from @kepano to edit that JavaScript code to work in this scenario. It might be that it won't work at all with my instructions.

5 replies

FelipeRearden Oct 12, 2021
Author

Hello @Taitava !!!!!

Thank you very much for explain all of this!!!!

My hope was something that was already "integrated" with shell commands on MacOs/Win/Linux in a way that I just could run a command already made for this type o situation :(

I'm gonna follow you solution and try to talk with the creator to see if the creator can help me.

Thanks again and I'm sorry if I open our new discussion section with a "almost impossible" user case :)

Have a great day!

Taitava Oct 12, 2021
Maintainer

You are welcome! Don't be sorry! This is a really good real world example about a workflow that would be nice to achieve. It's a good opening for this section! 🙂 And who knows, maybe my answer is not the "final truth"? Maybe someone else can manage to come up with something more complete than my answer? Who knows! 😎

Have a nice day to you too! 🙂

Taitava Oct 12, 2021
Maintainer

And thanks for marking my message as an answer! 🌷

FelipeRearden Oct 13, 2021
Author

You are welcome! Don't be sorry! This is a really good real world example about a workflow that would be nice to achieve.

Thank you so much @Taitava !!!!

And thanks for marking my message as an answer! 🌷

Sure! It's the least that I can for taking your time to help me (as you always do).

I wish you a fantastic Wednesday!

Taitava Oct 14, 2021
Maintainer

Have a nice day, too! 🙂

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[Help] Shell Commands with JS scripts #73

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FelipeRearden Oct 11, 2021

Here is my Situation

Actual Workflow to do this

My Help Request

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Taitava Oct 12, 2021 Maintainer

1. option

2. option

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Oct 11, 2021

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