Link to parent on note creation

[Anaritus]

Pretty common pattern for notes to have links to "parent" notes for easier navigation. Is there a way to configure new notes, created from autocomplete to have a link to parent?

I haven't tried to implement this, but though of possible ways to achieve this:

• When creating a note from autocomplete you are still inside of parent note buffer, so it may be possible to extract filename from here
• After just creating the note, parent is the only Backlink to newly created one

[neo451]

Idea is interesting, maybe look at the new autocmds system: https://github.com/obsidian-nvim/obsidian.nvim/wiki/Autocmds

We don't have a event for when new note is created ObsidianNoteNew, and it should maybe good for this.

After we have that, you can just use the only backlink method you mentioned to do what you what.

It should be easy to do this, take a look if you have time, if not just open a issue for adding this event

[Anaritus]

Oh, that helped, thanks! I did this approach, without need for autocmds

pre_write_note = function(client, note)
	-- Anchor, two lines after which to find placholder
	local parent_anchor = "#up"
	-- Placeholder to overwrite with parent link
	local parent_placeholder = "#TODO: parent if exists"

	local backs = client:find_backlinks(note)
	if #backs ~= 1 then
		return
	end
	local parent = backs[1]
	local id, alias = parent.note.id, parent.note.aliases[1]
	local anchor = note:resolve_anchor_link(parent_anchor)
	if anchor == nil then
		return
	end
	local anchor_line_number = anchor.line
	local anchor_line =
		vim.api.nvim_buf_get_lines(0, anchor_line_number + 1, anchor_line_number + 2, false)[1]
	if anchor_line:find(parent_placeholder) then
		vim.api.nvim_buf_set_lines(0, anchor_line_number + 1, anchor_line_number + 2, false, {
			"[[" .. id .. "|" .. alias .. "]]",
		})
	end
end,

What it does:

• checks that current note has only one backlink
• looks for #up anchor (under this one I store my parent link)
• This part may look a little weird: checks for #TODO: parent is exists line match two lines below #up anchor. This is done so because that is the structure of my template. Rigid, but avoids iterating over all of the lines up to next anchor
• If line matches, substitutes to working link to the only backlink

Limitations:

• Parent should be written before this works, otherwise backlink is not found. Not sure if this is fixable, but not blocking since easily avoidable (write buffer before jumping to new note)
• Anchor #up should exist when writing, i.e., if it was inserted at the same time, it will not work (but will if you just write again). Pretty sure this is avoidable with ObsidianNoteWritePost autocmd, will try that one.

UPD: moving to WritePost did, in fact, help. I think that is a fine solution

Unrelated question: How do I configure new note to automatically insert default template on creating note? I can do a hack with checking if any anchors exist and if not, inserting my template, but this feels off