Daily Named Folder

A community plugin for Obsidian.

the daily-named-folder plugin is exactly like the official daily-note plugin, except for the fact (1) that the daily note is created inside it's own folder and (2) a one-line description is added to the filename. This is desirable if you want to keep attachments for the daily note in separate folders.

It is possible to create daily folders using the core daily-notes plugin. Currently (as of 2021-08-31) this will break the 'previous/next' navigation hotkeys, but if that is not a problem and you don't want named folders, it is recommended you use that over this plugin.

Using this plugin will (probably) not work with other plugins such as Calendar that rely on the default implementation in daily-notes and will get upset by the named folders.

The plugin implements most of the nice features of the daily-notes plugin and adds a few new ones

• Previous/Next daily note navigation. Will find the nearest previous/next node - no need to worry about missed days.
• Smart new daily note: the today's daily folder function will create a new daily note or, if a file already exists, open up the existing file.
• Template selection. Specify a template markdown file to be used when a new daily note is created. Arguments between {{ }} will be parsed by Moment.js.
• Moment.js date formatting for filenames
• Path checking in the plugin configuration menu. Get immediate feedback if you mistyped your path.
• Filename descriptions. Add a brief description to each daily note that is appended after the date. Useful for quickly summarising a document and to speed up navigation.

Functions

The plugin exposes 4 new functions to the Obsidian command pallette:

1. Rename daily folder - if a daily folder is active (i.e. open), it will open a rename dialog. Will rename both the folder and the note (which have the same name)

2. Open next daily folder note - if a daily folder is active (i.e. open), it will open the nearest daily note with a later date. Will notify user if there are no newer files

3. Open previous daily folder note - same as (2) but for older files

4. Open Today's daily folder note - Creates a new daily folder note (filled with template) if none exists. If a daily folder note already exists, it will open the existing one instead. Serves to quickly make or get to today's note.

   This function is also added as a ribbon icon (i.e. as an icon to the left sidebar) for quick access.

Configuration

There are 4 configuration options

1. Folder & Name format - the date format that will be the base of the daily folder (and file) name. Follows Moment.js format rules

2. Prompt for filename summary - toggle value. If enabled, the plugin will prompt for a filename summary when creating a new note. If turned off it will just use the folder & name format for filename creation.

   E.g. 20210801 with prompt off, with prompt on you can get something like 20210801_getting_a_new_puppy

   If you find yourself turning this feature off, ask yourself if the standard daily-notes core plugin also works for your use case. If you specify a daily folder path as e.g.YYYYMMDD/YYYYMMDD it will create a daily folder with that format. So that is completely identical to this plugin with this feature turned off! The only reason why you would use this currently is because the daily-notes plugin's 'previous/next' navigation breaks, while this plugin has no problems with that. I think that should be considered a bug and might be fixed in the future!

3. Daily folders location - the root directory for new daily folders. Does not support nesting currently

4. Template file location - the path to the markdown file to use as template. Supports Moment.js variables. Can be disabled with a toggle switch. If disabled, an empty file will be created instead.

Example use case

I developed the plugin for my workflow. I use Obsidian as my lab journal for research. In this workflow I write down experiments done during the day, reference prior results a lot and include experimental images.

The official daily-note plugin did not work for this workflow for 2 reasons:

1. It is not possible to keep images for a daily note together with the daily file in one folder and retain previous/next shortcuts.

   Being able to find images quickly is helpful if one intends to use them for other display purposes (e.g. in making a presentation, sending to a collaborator)

2. It is not possible to quickly add a brief description to the daily note filename (it is always just a date)

   While obsidian makes it much easier to navigate, it still cannot beat a oneline summary. It also makes your daily notes easier to understand for someone not using obsidian

TODO

There are a few things that could be made more robust

1. The current date format only supports 'fixed-length' formats. So nothing like fully month names, as their length is not fixed e.g. 'august' vs 'may'
2. The reveal-active-file in file explorer doesn't work when just creating a new daily note. I think it may be related to the file-explorer not having indexed the file. Probably an easy fix, suggestions welcome.
3. At the moment, the next-and-previous daily note navigation searches through all the markdown files in the vault. I don't know how well this will scale with vault size. So far with 200 files this is not a problem, but if this becomes a problem, the plugin may have to switch to getting a list upon load, rather than sorting through all files every time.
4. Currently, deep nesting is not supported. So you can put your daily folders in the folder dailies/ but not in dailies/botany/jungle-tour/ . Not a difficult fix.
5. Figure out a nice way to expand the 'active' file during the previous/next navigation while closing the other daily files. One wouldn't want to 'unfold' all the folders in the file-explorer, but it is also annoying that you cannot see the 'context' in the file explorer currently. Would probably require some decently complex system involving file-explorer:reveal-active-file