I posted this to the Obsidian forum, but it is more appropriate here. Full disclosure, I know enough about scripts to locate familiar text (e.g. a date format) and edit it with trial and error. No coding experience.
My intent:
I want to copy a markdown link for a specific email. When I paste that link, I want it to come with the date of the email, but in double brackets (e.g. [[Example]]). This is important for Obsidian to create an internal link. If it is surrounding a YYYY-MM-DD format, it will link the paste to something in Obsidian called a Daily Note. Therefore, when I reference a previous daily note, I will see the links to the challenging emails I was working on that day.
What I tried:
I changed the Hookmark script for Mac Mail to put double brackets around the date of the email that is included in the text portion (i.e. not the web address portion) of the markdown hyperlink. As you could anticipate, having double brackets around a date in the bracket portion of the hyperlink causes issues. I also tried to use quotes and escape the characters.
What I think could be the solution, but don’t know how to do it:
There is somewhere else in Hookmark that can append the date in double brackets after the mark down hyperlink on the clipboard. So when I paste it, the normal mark down hyperlink is displayed and the obsidian internal link is after it. I would have no idea how to code this though.
Yes ideally the inner double brackets, around the date, wouldn’t disrupt the regular markdown syntax for the link when rendered as hypertext in Obsidian.
[Your iCloud storage is full. [[2023-07-11]] From noreply@email.apple.com to tetatnt@gmail.com](hook://email/234876.93349984.5168599455124%40email.apple.com)
As an alternative, how would I append the date after the markdown link copy. Where in Hookmark is it possible to make that change in the script.
[Your iCloud storage is full. From noreply@email.apple.com to tetatnt@gmail.com](hook://email/234876.93349984.5168599455124%40email.apple.com) [[2023-07-11]]
Thanks for any help. Little to no coding experience.
Here is the script you can try. Please go to Hookmark Preferences window ->Scripts->Mail->Get Address, replace the script with the following script. If anything goes wrong, you can always click on “Reset to default” button to reset the script.
Thank you
Script
-- set longFormName to false to exclude source, destination and date from the names of links to email
global longFormName
global placeMetaDataBeforeSubject
set longFormName to true
set placeMetaDataBeforeSubject to false
-- you may replace these labels if you like, such as "de" and "Ă " respectively in French
global sourceLabel
global destinationLabel
set sourceLabel to "From"
set destinationLabel to "to"
tell application "Mail"
set frontWinIsMessageViewer to false
set fid to id of front window
repeat with v in message viewers
set wid to id of window of v
if fid = wid then
set frontWinIsMessageViewer to true
end if
end repeat
if frontWinIsMessageViewer then
try
set theSelection to selection
set theMessage to item 1 of theSelection
set mid to message id of theMessage
set mid to my encodeText(mid, true, false)
set sub to subject of theMessage
set mTitle to my getMessageTitle(sub, theMessage)
return "[" & mTitle & "](" & "email://" & mid & ")"
on error eStr number enum
display dialog eStr & "step 1"
return
end try
end if
try
set theSelection to selection
set theMessage to item 1 of theSelection
set mid to message id of theMessage
set mid to my encodeText(mid, true, false)
set subj to subject of theMessage
set wname to name of front window
set astid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {" ", ": "} -- to strip "re: ", "re:", "Re: ", "fwd:", etc
repeat with i from 1 to count of text items of subj
repeat with j from 1 to count of text items of wname
if text item i of subj is equal to text item j of wname then
repeat with k from j to (count of text items of subj) - i
set window_title to text item k of wname
set subj_name to text item (i + k - j) of subj
if window_title is not equal to subj_name then
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid
return
end if
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid
set mTitle to my getMessageTitle(subj, theMessage)
return "[" & mTitle & "](" & "email://" & mid & ")" -- an old message
end if
end repeat
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid
on error eStr number enum
display dialog eStr & "step 2"
end try
try
set searchText to name of front window
set astid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {" — "} -- to strip " — mailbox"
set searchText to text item 1 of searchText
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid
set matchText to paragraphs of (do shell script "mdfind \"kMDItemSubject == " & quoted form of searchText & "\"")
if matchText ≠{} then
set targetMatch to (item 1 of matchText) as rich text
if targetMatch ≠"false" then
set lns to paragraphs of (read targetMatch)
repeat with ln in lns
if ln starts with "Message-ID:" then
set x to length of "Message-ID:"
set ln to characters (x + 1) thru -1 of ln as string
repeat while ln begins with " "
set ln to characters (2) thru -1 of ln as string
end repeat
repeat while ln begins with "<"
set ln to characters 2 thru -1 of ln as string
end repeat
repeat while ln ends with ">"
set ln to characters 1 thru -2 of ln as string
end repeat
set ln to my encodeText(ln, true, false)
return "email://" & ln
end if
end repeat
end if
end if
on error eStr number enum
display dialog eStr & "step 3"
end try
end tell
on encodeText(theText, encodeCommonSpecialCharacters, encodeExtendedSpecialCharacters)
set theStandardCharacters to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
set theCommonSpecialCharacterList to "$+!'/?;&@=#%><{}\"~`^\\|*"
set theExtendedSpecialCharacterList to ".-_:"
set theAcceptableCharacters to theStandardCharacters
if encodeCommonSpecialCharacters is false then set theAcceptableCharacters to theAcceptableCharacters & theCommonSpecialCharacterList
if encodeExtendedSpecialCharacters is false then set theAcceptableCharacters to theAcceptableCharacters & theExtendedSpecialCharacterList
set theEncodedText to ""
repeat with theCurrentCharacter in theText
if theCurrentCharacter is in theAcceptableCharacters then
set theEncodedText to (theEncodedText & theCurrentCharacter)
else
set theEncodedText to (theEncodedText & encodeCharacter(theCurrentCharacter)) as string
end if
end repeat
return theEncodedText
end encodeText
on encodeCharacter(theCharacter)
set theASCIINumber to (the ASCII number theCharacter)
set theHexList to {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"}
set theFirstItem to item ((theASCIINumber div 16) + 1) of theHexList
set theSecondItem to item ((theASCIINumber mod 16) + 1) of theHexList
return ("%" & theFirstItem & theSecondItem) as string
end encodeCharacter
on getMessageTitle(subj, theMessage)
tell application "Mail"
set subj to subject of theMessage
if longFormName is false then
return subj
end if
try
set c to count of to recipients of theMessage
if c > 0 then
set toMail to address of item 1 of to recipients of theMessage
else
set toMail to ""
end if
set fromMail to extract address from sender of theMessage
set d to date received of theMessage
set mon to month of d as number
if mon < 10 then
set mon to "0" & mon
end if
set yy to year of d as string
set dd to day of d as string
set d to (yy & "-" & mon & "-" & dd)
if placeMetaDataBeforeSubject then
set subj to d & " " & sourceLabel & " " & fromMail & " " & destinationLabel & " " & toMail & " " & subj
else
set subj to subj & " [[" & d & "]] " & sourceLabel & " " & fromMail & " " & destinationLabel & " " & toMail
end if
end try
return subj
end tell
end getMessageTitle