Templater

Templater is an Obsidian extension that can be used to automate the creation of notes and automatically sort them based on prompts. i use it extensively to quickly create literature notes.

system prompts with Templater

when using the templater extension, you can add prompts to create variables that can used in the created note. so when you make a new note using templater, a modal will pop up asking you for the desired variable. this can save a lot of time if a certain variable is used in multiple places throughout a note. to add prompts, use the const variableName = await tp.system.prompt("Variable Name") to the top of the template. here’s an example i use in my TV episode template.

<%*
const seriesName = await tp.system.prompt("Series Name")
const episodeNumber = await tp.system.prompt("Episode Number")
const URL = await tp.system.prompt("URL")
const publishDate = await tp.system.prompt("Published Date (YYYY-MM-DD)")
%>

automatically sort notes with Templater

you can automatically move a note when creating it with the templater plugin using tp.file.move. here’s a simple example, where title is a variable created with a system prompt.

<%*	
	await tp.file.move("/desired folder/" + title)
%>

you can even automatically create folders using already created variables. for example, this is part of the code in my TV episode template. it automatically renames the note to “Episode {episodeNumber}” and moves it into a folder with the series name, creating the folder if it doesn’t exist already.

<%*
// rename file
titleName = "Episode " + episodeNumber;
await tp.file.rename(titleName);
 
// make the directory a folder with the name of the series inside the tv show literature note folder
const dir = "/020 literature notes/tv/" + seriesName;
 
// if directory doesn't exist
if (!tp.file.exists(dir)) {
	// create the folder
	await this.app.vault.createFolder(dir);
}
 
// move current note to the series folder
await tp.file.move(dir + "/" + titleName, tp.file.find_tfile(titleName))
%>

creating another note using Templater

you can use the function tp.file.create_new inside of a template to create an additional file when creating a file using templater. when i make a literature note, i use it to automatically create another note that lists every note from that source. for example, if i make a note for a TV episode, the following code will check if a note with the series name already exists. if not, it creates another note using the template TV Series Template and automatically sorts it into the folder with my episode notes (the variables .

// check if a note with the series name exists
const existing = tp.file.find_tfile(seriesName);
 
// if it doesn't exist
if (!existing) {
	
	// get the series template file content
	const templateName = "TV Series Template"
	let templateFile = await tp.file.find_tfile(templateName);
	let templateContent = await app.vault.read(templateFile);
	
	// create series note
	await tp.file.create_new(templateContent, seriesName, false, dir);
}

the note for the series uses dataview to display a table of all the episodes i’ve already taken notes on (replace the “ with ```)

---
category: tv
type: series
series: "<% tp.file.title %>"
tags: format/tv, type/series 
---
# <% tp.file.title %>
 
``dataview
	table published as "Date Aired"
	where show = "<% tp.file.title %>"
	sort file asc
``
 
---
[[TV Shows]]