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Is it possible for markdown export to link to other files?

I exported a notebook to markdown (which is great), but I found that the files don't have links to other files like they were in Siyuan.

So, is there anyway to make markdown exports have links to other files?

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    Guide: Publishing SiYuan notes with Hugo • sagar
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    Is it possible for markdown export to link to other files?

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    • Siysuy •

      The anchor hash feature currently creates a span object <span id="20231110120736-ze6m41f"></span>. Some kind of program should be able to understand and find this block inside the note as reference. Can anyone help me understand how this can be useful after export, where do I use this, which program understands this syntax?

      The export mode Anchor hash for notebook Markdown exporting has some limitations.

      In the case i want to publish a particular note (with links to other notes) my approach is:

      1. From main notebook export the notebook you want to publish to .sy.zip file
      2. Create new (temporary) notebook
      3. import .sy.zip file to new temp notebook
      4. Export temp notebook export it to any selectable format (only markdown is currently selectable)

      Other limitation of Anchor has export and the only way I got it to work (performed testing by exporting to Obsidian):

      • currently only works for notebook and does not allow nested notes. In the process of exporting all notes must be unnested inside notebook for .md export to function.
      • Currently does not support block reference. Can only link to main note. Tested by importing to obsidian (not a siyuan issue, but a markdown syntax limitation i presume)

      Depending on the responses here I might add a feature request soon that involves the concept of user selectable export syntax. In which before execution of export using anchor hash a user can type in the conversion syntax to apply. User is presented with input fields much like the settings > Export > Anchor text wrapping symbol fields.

      Conversion syntax for siyuan > obsidian would be: [[test3.md/Note 2#^d8bf62|Note 2]] and conversion input fields could somehow be [[ .. / .. #^ .. | .. ]]

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    • sagar • • 2
      VIP Warrior

      I think there is a fairly simple solution to this, which I will describe below. I think it can be implemented as a simple Python script that does some post-processing of the exported markdown files. I will try to create a proof-of-concept script, but it will take me a few days because I am not a programmer and will need to learn some Python programming first.

      Solution description

      1. In Settings > Export configure 'Ref' to 'Anchor text with block URL'. After doing this, a link to another block in a SiYuan note appears in the exported Markdown file as [Anchor text](siyuan://blocks/block-id).

      2. Write a Python script that opens each exported markdown file and uses regex matching to identify all instances of [Anchor text](siyuan://blocks/block-id). For each instance,

      3. Use the /api/query/sql API endpoint to get details of the block-id by making a query like:

        { "stmt": "SELECT * FROM blocks WHERE id='block-id'" }

      4. In the query result, you can find the hpath key whose value is a human readable path.

        1. If the block-id is for a block of type document (which would be the case for a link to another document), then the Python script just needs to replace siyuan://blocks/block-id with hpath_value.md which would be the relative path to the exported markdown file that the link points to.
        2. If the block-id is for a block inside a document (e.g. to some arbitrary paragraph block in the document), all you need to do is to open the exported markdown document containing that paragraph (from the value of hpath for that block-id), find the start of the paragraph and add an <a name="block-id"></a> anchor at the start of the paragraph. Then, the siyuan://blocks/block-id in the exported markdown file can be replaced by hpath_value.md#block-id

      This would basically solve the problem of having correct links in the exported markdown files and additionally the exported notes can easily be converted to HTML and published e.g. with a static site generator like Hugo.

      @88250 Do you see any problems with this approach? I don't understand why SiYuan does not do this already when exporting to markdown.. but in any case, a Python script that does the above can post-process the exported markdown files from SiYuan and fix all the links. What do you think?

      1 Reply
      1 Operate
      sagar updated this reply at 2023-12-01 08:25:07
    • sagar •
      VIP Warrior

      @adham Wow 😍 You are a master programmer indeed! I was still trying to figure out how to use Python to open all .md files in a directory, by copy/pasting code from Stackoverflow 😄 This solution is exactly what I meant.

      I do believe it can be extended to include references to any arbitrary block, not just a document block. You did say that you don't want to mutate the linked documents, but I am just laying out the approach in case any other master programmers want to try it 😄. You wrote,

      I don't know how to find out if the link is of a block or a document,

      I see a few different possible checks for this

      • Look at the 'type' field in the response of the SQL query. If it is a document block, the type value will be 'd'. Other type values are given in the documentation at /Please Start Here/Advanced search/Type filtering
      • I believe that if the block is of type document, then the 'root_id' will be the same as 'id'. See the documentation of the SQL table fields at /Please Start Here/Advanced search/Database table

      So one or both of the above checks can be used to determine if the block is of type 'document' or something else.

      If the block is of type something else, then the way to link to it would be

      1. Open the target document that contains the block (i.e. the hpath)
      2. Search for the occurrence of the content in the 'markdown' field of the SQL query response. This will place the "cursor" inside the document to the start of the paragraph (or whatever other content) the block points to
      3. At this cursor position, insert an HTML anchor text like: <a name="block-id"></a>
      4. Then, update the siyuan://blocks/block-id part of the link to hpath_value.md#block-id

      This approach enables having links in the markdown files to any other markdown files or parts inside markdown files.

      @adham Thank you once again for your example code 🙏

      3 Operate
      sagar updated this reply at 2023-12-02 01:22:47
      sagar updated this reply at 2023-12-02 01:21:03
      sagar updated this reply at 2023-12-02 01:18:06
    • 88250 •
      MOD

      In theory, programs that support standard Markdown (CommonMark) should be able to support parsing and rendering inline HTML elements, that is, <span>, but they may not necessarily support anchor hash jumps. After rendering from Markdown to HTML, the browser can support anchor hash jumping, so currently, exporting references as anchor hashs is the optimal solution.

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