Links to content blocks

[olayway]

Links to a specific block (paragraph) within a given page, e.g. [[roadmap#^dcf64c]].

See obsidian docs for reference.

Design

UPDATE 2023-12-12 from https://github.com/datopian/flowershow/issues/62#issuecomment-1843646839

To support these probably want a remark plugin or simple regex pattern match that search for ^six-digit-alphanumeric and then converts that to html anchors in the output.

[rufuspollock]

@khalilcodes isn't this already supported in remark-wiki-link-plus (ie. you support [[xyz#anchor-link]]?

[rufuspollock]

Actually this may be tough depending on how obsidian inserts those anchors into the file. Need to research that.

[blacklightpy]

We can actually use custom anchors. Basically it's just some random anchors, you just have to look into the mentioned page and find the block containing the anchor.

[rufuspollock]

@blacklightpy how does obsidian encode the anchor link in markdown (and how does it insert the target anchor in markdown?)

[blacklightpy]

@rufuspollock So basically if we use the menu to create an anchor to a block, it will assign a random ID (6 digit alphanumeric) to that block by ending the block with ^ID.

I can refer to it by [[Page To Link#^ID]].

So I can manually name blocks by ending them with ^my-anchor and I can refer to them by typing [[Page To Link#^my-anchor]].

Spaces are not allowed in anchor names.

I also think anchors only have to be unique per page. So it's not stored in a database, but rather it's like simple HTML anchors.

Edit: corrected ^Id to #^ID inside Wikilink syntax.

[rufuspollock]

@blacklightpy thanks for the clear write-up.

So basically to implement you need to search for regex pattern ^six-digit-alphanumeric and then convert that to html anchors in the processing.

[blacklightpy]

@blacklightpy thanks for the clear write-up.

So basically to implement you need to search for regex pattern ^six-digit-alphanumeric and then convert that to html anchors in the processing.

@rufuspollock No, you should search for ^any-length-alphanumeric-with-hypens-and-underscores which appear at the end of a block, because custom anchors exist too.

[blacklightpy]

@rufuspollock More details (I just installed Obsidian after setting up my PC)

• Important: Actually it doesn't support underscores, only alphanumeric and hyphens.
• Minor detail: The anchor is not directly appended to the end of the block, but it is separated by a space character. That is, if the block ends with done., the anchor should be done. ^anchor, not done^anchor. Although I don't think this will make an effective difference (exceptions being cases where the block ends with something like x^2)
• Minor detail: The anchor is technically the block ID. But block IDs are only generated when you specifically refer to them. For example, if you link to a block, then clear the generated block ID, and link to it again, the newly assigned block ID will be different.

[rufuspollock]

@blacklightpy thank-you this is very useful.

[blacklightpy]

One more correction.. it's not [[Page to Link^anchor]], it is [[Page to Link#^anchor]].

Without the #, it will try to look for a page named "Page to Link^anchor".

# is for heading anchors and ^ is for blocks. So basically a block ID is implemented as a special type of heading anchor.