Templater question

Help
1

Obsidian (running under MacOS) isn’t finding my Templater script. I hope someone can set me straight.

I’m working in a vault called Diary, with a subdirectory called scripts. I created a script called create-next-day.js in the scripts folder; this script creates a new markdown file.

I went into the Templater settings and made sure that for the script files location folder I entered “/scripts”. (Out of desperation I also tried “scripts” — no difference.) On the settings page Templater tells me it detects the user script tp.user.create-next-day.

In the Obsidian Command Palette I can see two entries: “Templater: Insert create-next-day.js” and “Templater: Create create-next-day.js”. I can assign either or both of them to hotkeys, but when I try to run either script, either from the Command Palette or a hotkey, I get: “Templater Error: Couldn’t find the template file associated with this hotkey.” The error message also suggest looking at the browser console, but there’s nothing useful there.

I’ve checked that I have the proper spelling and everything is in lower case. I’ve tried turning off and on the Templater plugin. I’ve tried exiting and restarting Obsidian. I’m at a loss. Any thoughts or suggestions?

2

If you have non-Templater scripts in the same scripts folder, try separating them and file away Templater-only scripts in their own folder.
This used to be an issue a year ago (there was even a post on this on the forum), not sure if it went away.
I still keep all QuickAdd, Templater, User Plugins, etc. custom scripts in different folders.

Btw, the Insert and Create commands must refer to md files, not js files, though.

3

Thanks Yurcee. I only have the one script in that folder.

Now I’m not sure why the Insert and Create commands refer to the JavaScript file name. Sigh.

4

Yurcee is pretty sharp, but not a mind reader (that I know of).

Share what you are doing/have now in a code block, and maybe Yurcee or others can have a look and offer guidance.

5

Thanks ariehen but it’s not a coding problem. It seems to be Templater not finding the JavaScript file in the /scripts directory, despite everything seeming (to my novice eyes) to be correct.

6

But in case it is a coding problem … here’s the js code:

module.exports = async (tp) => {
const moment = tp.date; // Access Moment.js from Templater
const currentFile = tp.file.title; // Get the current file name without extension

// Ensure the file name matches the `yyyy-mm-dd` format
if (!/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/.test(currentFile)) {
    new Notice("Current file name is not in the expected yyyy-mm-dd format.");
    return;
}

// Calculate the next day's date
const nextDate = moment(currentFile, "YYYY-MM-DD").add(1, "day");

// Format the next date for the new file name
const nextFileName = nextDate.format("YYYY-MM-DD") + ".md";

// Create the content for the new file
const formattedDate = nextDate.format("MM/DD/YYYY");
const dayOfWeek = nextDate.format("dddd");
const newFileContent = `${formattedDate} — ${dayOfWeek} — \n\n`;

// Create and open the new file
const newFile = await app.vault.create(nextFileName, newFileContent);
await app.workspace.openLinkText(nextFileName, "", true);

};

7

Thanks all for your help. To get around the problem I used ChatGPT to write a custom plugin that accomplishes what I need.

8

Well, the custom js scripts are called from an md file with tp.user; see Templater docs.

Custom plugins may be overdoing it as you can house js scripts within md files with Templater.
However, Templater has one drawback: the Insert command can only fire when a markdown note (any) is open. To get around this problem I use the User Plugins plugin, which enables me to run arbitrary js code without having to create a full plugin (and go through the process of compiling ts into js, etc.).