Obsidian Note Codes

Plus, the existing linking system allows you to link to a particular heading within an existing note.

From memory… you begin with typing [[ to start the incremental autocomplete on note filename, then when the desired one is top of the list, press # to select a section based on heading.

Plus, Obsidian kind of already has this functionality. You can give any note an alias, and all linking to that alias will instead link to the note. So if you're not worried about being agnostic, and unless if you want to mark every single note, I still don't see the point. And even then, even assuming that you do want every note with a code alias, you can just set it up on a template.

(developer here)

I specifically tried to make this mostly Obsidian-agnostic - the algorithm to generate these note codes is very simple and only requires the note's path relative to the vault.

Here's the whole algorithm in Python:

    import hashlib
    
    def hash_string(s):
        h = hashlib.sha256(s.encode()).digest()
        n = ((h[0] << 16) | (h[1] << 8) | h[2]) % (32**4)
        a = '0123456789ABCDEFGHJKMNPQRSTVWXYZ'
        r = ''.join(a[n // 32**(3-i) % 32] for i in range(4))
        return f"{r[:2]}-{r[2:]}"

Sounds like the same could be done with a slightly longer, but far more readable date + sequential identifier. Such as `YY-xxx` or `YYMM-xxx`.

This looks fine, but then if I rename the note, the code changes, invalidating all the hand-written notes links. So it feels unpractical. I would still prefer to encode the creation timestamp and put it in the title/filename/property. At least this would be fixed.

Oh, I thought it meant written in the Notes app. I guess it's nice for those, who don't use johnny decimal system.

(developer here)

Thanks for the feedback! I guess this plugin is a bit specific to how I use Obsidian [1], as I don't rename my notes quite as often as others do.

As I mentioned in the post, my main use case is being able to quickly reference notes in my hand-written journal. I've also used it a few times in some personal shell scripts.

Probably not a very useful plugin if you already live entirely in your Obsidian vault, though - in there good old [[wiki links]] are much more useful.

I've left a few comments so far on the rename problem, but yeah, it's a hard one to solve. I'll try to think of ways to improve it.

[1]: https://ezhik.jp/hypertext-maximalism/

Aye, so this is fine as long as there's just one entity generating IDs, so it can automatically check for collision and re-generate.

In a distributed system it's another matter.

I'm currently using 6 base-40 chars (upcase and lowcase letters, so e.g. "SXJwzQY") that represent an integer Unix time.

The base-40 alphabet is enough that all IDs up until year ~2099 will fit in 6 chars, and it's nicer to type on the phone when you only have to switch between two keyboard modes, the upcase and lowcase but not also the numbers and symbols mode.

I can imagine a QR generator for "obsidian://" links, which would open tagged locations, could be very useful, to identify contents of boxes without opening them.

If the codes are written by hand, then typing them into UI and manually searching for them could be tedious.

---

Emojis/Random Images on boxes, could be used to quickly, visually find the right box in a sea of identical gray boxes.

(developer here)

Interesting to hear that you think this is the opposite of how Obsidian works. I specifically opted for this approach so that these note codes are entirely independent of Obsidian itself and can be ported over to other solutions.

The other way to do it would be to store note codes in some vault-specific storage, but then those codes would be tied to Obsidian, which worries me a bit.

That said, I do want to figure out a nice way to improve it. One idea I've had was to introduce a cache of sorts, so that the plugin will remember all the older codes a note previously had. Do you think this would help your use case?

You're lucky to regard note names as stable enough that they work as unchanging IDs for you!

But is it not then the same thing, because you already "allocated an ID" by naming it? Did you, before coming up with the 4-char hash, often label things outside the vault with the same names as those found in your vault?

I like the idea of throwing the note code in the frontmatter of the note.

Then it is stable, not tied to the vault, not tied to the name, can be customized on a per note basis if a user wants (00-00 is a specific note for example), and can be deduplicated within a vault.

maybe pick an ID at random, record it in a "used" list, and store the code in the note as a property? an event handlers(1) could manage removing used codes from the list when a note is deleted. likewise, another handler could check if new notes (ie those imported from another vault) already have an ID and register it as used or ask the user if they want to generate a fresh ID.

[1] https://docs.obsidian.md/Plugins/Events