Properties: Support EXTERNAL Markdown links

Adding my voice here: I’m also using markdown links in a list in properties.

aliases: [Kleene operator, Kleene closure]
source:
  - "[regexone site](https://regexone.com/lesson/kleene_operators)"
  - "[wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleene_star)"

I’d love if obsidian recognized these as links, so that they’re clickable in the reading view :slight_smile:

MOD-EDIT: For the FR regarding internal markdown links (like [mynote](note.md)) go here

34 Likes

Use case or problem

The new Properties system handles wikilinks, and url strings, but not markdown links (i.e. “( )” ). Using a url is not ideal when you are linking externally. For example if I am linking to Akira Kurosawa’s imdb page I want to use a markdown link, “[Akira Kurosawa]( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000041/?ref_=tt_ov_dr )”, instead of just the url, which gives no information about what the external link is.

Proposed solution

v1.4 already renders wikilinks correctly. Can the same thing be done for markdown links?

6 Likes

I would love this. I do so much with linking files together through DB Folder for linking Videos to games. It is a nice thing to do.

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+1, and adding the words “masked external links” in hopes that it makes this show up in search results—I also created a duplicate.

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I didn’t know this was still being “worked on.”

I wanted to update my properties in bulk, trying to add clickable external URLs of my git history of each file.
Currently, one cannot add https:// and only text strings are accepted, so I went with:

ghrepoURL:
  - github.com/<user>/<reponame>/blob/<fullcommitID>/<encoded foldername>/<encoded filename>.md
  - github.com/<user>/<reponame>/blob/<fullcommitID>/<encoded foldername>/<encoded filename>.md
.
.
.

Once this is implemented, I’ll need to do mass replace again…

That’s the way the cookie crumbles if it’s obsidian-shaped, I guess. :wink:

2 Likes

Indeed, important FR, didn’t pay attention both internal AND external markdown links aren’t supported yet, as mentioned here :

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Emphatic +1

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+1 - Please add this!
It’s so badly needed,
and should hopefully be pretty easy to implement as it’s already working this way for wiki links.
Thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

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Would very much like to support this!

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Any news/ETA regarding this FR (and the same FR with internal markdown links) ?

Thank you very much.

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+1 - Please add this!!

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+1 This would make life much easier

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Has this been implemented yet ?

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The absence of this feature is probably the last annoying thing about using Obsidian fluently. I can paste a raw HTTP link in the frontmatter manually via an external editor and only by surrounding it with quotes. But if I try to update it in Obsidian, it adds spaces after http (e.g. http:<space>//...) and makes the frontmatter invalid.

Update: seems like Frontmatter Links plugin does the job pretty well. The only “limitation” is that links must be surrounded by quotes or double quotes, which means - there won’t be any help (IntellySence) from the editor to write those links.

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No, the plugin works and without quotes. I know it first hand, because I developed this feature for that plugin

UPD: To clarify I meant the raw links

---
url: https://google.com/
---
2 Likes

Hi folks, that’s some testing I have been doing on internal and external links inside front-matter

In brief:

Int. links: Only Wiki syntax is supported
Ext. links: Only URLs are supported

That should cover most needs, but I agree it’s a limitation that markdown syntax for links is not supported inside frontmatter.

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Hi,

Are there any news regarding this FR ? Is external / internal markdown links support planned at some point ?

This is the last thing preventing me from switching to properties.

Thank you very much.

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+1, this would make Properties so much better

Just ran into this myself, so it’s nice seeing others have commented!

I’m trying to expand out the feature set of the GitLab Issues plugin. The example readme shows a really nice Dataview example block that creates a live task list, which I want on my daily notes page to help track things. However, the URL is external. I don’t know if Dataview is capable of masking or formatting a long URL, so I instead tried to get things working in the properties so I could link off of it. And then I ran into this issue. :smiley:

There are other attributes that the GitLab API exposes that could be properties, and a few of them (like related issues) could be affected by this as well.

1 Like