Open application specific urls

[MaralWa]

Hi,

MacOs offers application specific url to information/documents that are managed by some specific application. For exampl I use DEVONthink to manage and store documents. The URL of a document looks like this x-devonthink-item://<UUID>. The command open is able to handle this kind of URLs, for example open x-devonthink-item://<some UUID> opens a document stored in DEVONthink. I often attach documents to my notes with links like [Some attachment](x-devonthink-item://<UUID>). When I click on these links in the Obsidian app on my MacBook/iPad/iPhone the app opens the attachment in the DEVONthink app.

My configuration of obsidean.nvim contais this function

    follow_url_func = function(url)
      -- vim.ui.open(url, { cmd = { "open" } }) the default implementation does not work either
      vim.fn.jobstart({ "open", url }) -- Mac OS
    end,

So in theory obsidean.nvim should also open the attachment in DEVONthink. But instead I receive this error message Failed to resolve file 'x-devonthink-item://<UUID>'. My understanding of the function follow_url_func is that it just runs the command open x-devonthink-item://<some UUID> but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Is this a general problem, i.e. can obsidean.nvim only links to files or websites? Or do I have to add something to my confinguration?

Ciao

Maral

[neo451]

Hi, in theory the default vim.ui.open takes care of this, and uses open.

Let's add some print debugging, just print url. and also you can wrap a print around the vim.ui.open(url, { cmd = { "open" } })

[MaralWa]

Hi,

i added a print call two my function:

  follow_url_func = function(url)
     print("URL: " .. url)
     vim.ui.open(url, { cmd = { "open" } })
     -- vim.fn.jobstart({"xdg-open", url})  -- linux
   end

I hope that was the correct way. But I never saw any output. I analyzed the code of obsidian.nvim. The error Failed to resolve file 'x-devonthink-item://<UUID>' seems to be createde on line 697 of file client.lua. The function Obsidian.opts.follow_url_funcis called on line 655 ofclient.lua`:

      if res.url ~= nil then
        Obsidian.opts.follow_url_func(res.url)
        return
      end

Since it is not called res.url must be nil in this case. I guess obsidian.nvm does not recognize links like x-devonthink-item://<UUID> as lnks that can be handled by the operating system. The function util.is_url only recognizes these patterns defined in search.lua

NakedUrl = "https?://[a-zA-Z0-9._-@]+[a-zA-Z0-9._#/=&?:+%%-@]+[a-zA-Z0-9/]", -- https://xyz.com
FileUrl = "file:/[/{2}]?.*", -- file:///
MailtoUrl = "mailto:.*", -- mailto:emailaddress

One could consider this as a bug. One solution could be to add an optional list of protocols that can be handled by the user defined function Obsidian.opts.follow_url_func. In my case I would probably use the protocols ["x-devonthink-item://", "omnifocus:///"].

Ciao

MaralWa

[neo451]

I see! Thank you for your insight, I have listed this one improvement in #189, so that we can track it there. I will close this one for now.
Also your solution sounds great, we can just add an opts.open.protocols, and have a list of protocols like you mentioned, since you got this far, would you like to do a PR?

[MaralWa]

yes, I can try to provide a PR. But I am not sure when I will be able to do it.