Templater plugin (1.5 and newer): New Syntax and Examples

[Moonbase59]

FYI, here’s a link to the Templater Docs.

Since this thread is not only about durations anymore, I’ll change its title to “New Syntax and moment.js Examples”

[Moonbase59]

Here’s another example that came up today: Make a H1 heading that has the first letter of the note’s title uppercased.

# <% tp.file.title.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + tp.file.title.slice(1) %>

Shows nicely how to unleash the powers of Javascript using the Templater plugin.

[Moonbase59]

Another one: Cursor placement in Templates plugin (preferably also for Daily Notes template) - #7 by Moonbase59

[janpeeters]

@Moonbase59

@janpeeters

Do you know of a way how to have an updating ‘last modified’ header in the note?

Nope. If you find one, let me know Then again, Obsidian’s File Explorer pane shows the last modified date if you hover the mouse over a file, and it could possibly be retrieved “live” using the Dataview plugin.

I asked the author of Dataview on GitHub and it is possible:
Put an inline codeblock like this in your file with this code.

`= this.file.mtime`

[Moonbase59]

Now this is a great find—thank you!

Now we’ll only have to wait for …

• date/time string formatting
• date/time strings being localized into the currently set Obsidian language, not the system language

[Moonbase59]

Templater 1.6+: Combining dynamic commands and Javascript commands (undocumented)

Say you have a front matter field deceased: but only want to calculate/show the date if it’s defined (or non-empty), and a simple - if not.

You can actually combine Templater’s <%+ (dynamic) and <%* (Javascript) “introducers” as follows:

Use <%+*—this should produce dynamic results (if I’m not being caught by caching again):

<%+* if (tp.frontmatter["deceased"]) {tR+=moment(tp.frontmatter.deceased).format("ddd, YYYY-MM-DD")} else {tR+="-"}; %>

Now isn’t Templater great?

[Rishi]

Thanks for this discovery! This should be in the documentation already. I was looking for this since the day dynamic commands were released but in my attempts to try this, it never worked, I think I tried the asterisk before the plus and then tried the documentation and gave up. This could be so useful especially since we can call external APIs using fetch inside the template and process it as we like with JS.

Life is full of possibilities!

[dbyler]

In case it’s helpful, here’s syntax for adding next/back date links to your daily note based on the note title – not today’s date:

<< [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD",-1,tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 0, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD"),"YYYY-MM-DD") %>]] | [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD",1,tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 0, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD"),"YYYY-MM-DD") %>]] >>

This assumes files are named in YYYY-MM-DD format; you’ll need to update all 8 date format declarations if you use a different format.

[GlancingPluto]

When I try to do the “Days until Christmas” example. I get “PT0.219S.” What am I doing wrong? It’s been years since I’ve done anything like this.

[Moonbase59]

Hm. Thanks for bringing this up!

Something must have changed, or I made a stupid mistake. I also get PT0.219S (ISO duration, meaning 0.219 seconds) where it should be 219 days.

At least

<% moment("12-24", "MM-DD").diff(moment(), "days") %>

shows 219 (the correct # days). Which should be enough for the intended “days til Xmas”.

If, for some reason, it needs to be more exact, one could probably use

<% moment.duration(moment("12-24", "MM-DD").diff(moment())).as('days') %>

to arrive at 219.278469375 (at this moment in time).

Sorry if I messed something up!

[GlancingPluto]

@Moonbase59

<% moment("12-24", "MM-DD").diff(moment(), "days") %>

That totally worked.

…can I ask you an off-topic question because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to search for “u”…is {{date:u}} just impossible?

[Moonbase59]

Sounds like PHP, right? u is the timestamp in integer microseconds, right? I don’t think moment.js ever supported that.

In case of using (PHP) v (milliseconds), this is x with moment.js.

[GlancingPluto]

u is the number day of the week, with 1 being Monday.

it’s not vital, I’m just trying to get something to link to files in the format I had already used. I really appreciate you trying to help!

[Moonbase59]

I just like interesting problems

Day-of-the-week could be either d, e or E, according to the docs. For today, they all show 2 here:

<% moment().format('d - e - E') %>

You probably want E which returns 1–7 for Mon–Sun.

[GlancingPluto]

E worked! you are fantastic.

[Moonbase59]

Happy to help

[Moonbase59]

While we’re at it …

Days until …, done right

This is a little longer, but it will check if it’s already past the date for this year, and show the difference in days until the same date next year!

This is ideal for recurring events like Christmas, Birthdays, Anniversaries, etc.

To make things simple, I use JS to set a variable at the beginning. This allows editing just one place instead of many.

<!-- Days until any "MM-DD" date this year/next year -->
<%+* let edate = moment("12-24", "MM-DD"); let from = moment().startOf('day'); edate.diff(from, "days") >= 0 ? tR += edate.diff(from, "days") : tR += edate.add(1, "year").diff(from, "days") %>

Days until …, plus “It’s Today!”

Same as above, but will display “It’s today!” instead of a plain old zero if we happen to be on the date.

<!-- Days until any "MM-DD" date this year/next year with "TODAY" -->
<%+* let edate = moment("12-24", "MM-DD"); let from = moment().startOf('day'); edate.diff(from, "days") >= 0 ? edate.diff(from, "days") == 0 ? tR += "It’s today!" : tR += edate.diff(from, "days") : tR += edate.add(1, "year").diff(from, "days") %>

Enjoy! (And never again worry about “days to Christmas” being -2!)

[Moonbase59]

Caveat: Using moment() in day-only calculations → Wrong results!

@Pch

For the StartDate you can use solely moment() which is Today but it will exclude Today from the results .

A moment() always includes the time, so it’s more like a now() than like a today()!

Partial “moments” (like those gotten from, say moment("2021-05-23")) always get their time set to 00:00:00 local time.

Thus, when calculating “days to some date” you will get wrong results, especially when “now” is late in the day!

This is a trap I also often fell into.

The easy cure—if doing something with whole days, i.e. when not needing the time—is to always use moment().startOf('day') in these cases. This will also set the time part to 00:00:00 local time, and thus make things calculate correctly again!

Great to see this thread getting momentum—keep ’em coming!

[Pch]

A bit late but yes, you’re absolutely right here concerning the use of Moment() , I should have been more precise in my explanations !

Thank you for clearing this out !

[DandyLyons]

I’m building a template for monthly notes (which will be created from the Periodic Notes plugin. I would like the template to include a link to the next month and the previous month, and I’d like the template to already calculate the next month based off of the month of the template instance.

For example, if I use the template to create a note for [[2021-08]], then I want there to be a note for [[2021-07]] (last month) and a note for [[2021-09]] (next month).

I don’t want it to be calculated based off of the date for today tp.date.now(). I want it to be based off of whatever the month for that monthly note is.

Does anyone know how I would build something like this?