Evernote: Optionally import titles and dates as frontmatter values#488
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zarino wants to merge 2 commits intoobsidianmd:masterfrom
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Evernote: Optionally import titles and dates as frontmatter values#488zarino wants to merge 2 commits intoobsidianmd:masterfrom
zarino wants to merge 2 commits intoobsidianmd:masterfrom
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Adds three new options to the import settings for ENEX files: - Include original title in frontmatter - Include created date in frontmatter - Include updated date in frontmatter The storage of custom titles in note frontmatter is useful when importing notes from Evernote, since an Evernote note title can contain special characters which are not allowed in filenames and will therefore be sanitised during the import to Obsidian. If you want to retain your note titles exactly as they were in Evernote, you need to store the titles in the frontmatter, and then use plugins like [1] or [2] to display and update them. Some Obsidian users also prefer to store creation and modification dates in the frontmatter of their notes because they host their Obsidian vault on filesystems with inconsistent date handling, or because their chosen synchronisation systems tend to overzealously reset filesystem dates even when the actual note content hasn’t been changed. These two new options allow these users to import the creation/modification dates from their ENEX export file, to the frontmatter of their notes (where they can then be used by plugins like [2] and [3]), making for a smoother migration to Obsidian. [1]: https://github.com/snezhig/obsidian-front-matter-title [2]: https://github.com/johansan/notebook-navigator [3]: https://github.com/alangrainger/obsidian-frontmatter-modified-date
Blindly adding strings to the YAML frontmatter is a bad idea, as they might contain characters (such as the ": " sequence) which will result in malformed YAML. `applyTemplateOnBlock` and `getTemplateBlockSettings` now escape YAML frontmatter values by default, but with an option to `skipYamlEscaping`, which is set to true for the content and tag list blocks (where we trust any YAML special characters have been intentionally included).
tgrosinger
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Jan 5, 2026
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Thanks for these changes, it looks great. Just a couple comments.
Could you please also remove the ctime/mtime frontmatter properties and leave just the title property? I just did a little testing and it seems like the Evernote importer is properly setting the ctime/mtime on the file itself, so for now I'm requesting that this not be duplicated.
Thank you!
| skipYamlEscaping, | ||
| }: TemplateBlockSettings): string => { | ||
| if (value && check()) { | ||
| const finalValue = skipYamlEscaping ? value : escapeYamlValue(value); |
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Instead of adding this new flag, I think it would be simpler and easier to follow if value passed into this function is already escaped if it needs to be. So for the two templates where escaping is enabled now, it needs to instead escape noteData.content or noteData.title before calling getTemplateBlockSettings.
| import { TemplateBlockSettings } from '../template-settings'; | ||
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| export const getTemplateBlockSettings = (text: string, check: Function, T: any, value?: string): TemplateBlockSettings => { | ||
| export const getTemplateBlockSettings = (text: string, check: Function, T: any, value?: string, skipYamlEscaping?: boolean): TemplateBlockSettings => { |
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Remove skipYamlEscaping. See related comment.
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Follow-up to #467, which also fixes #409.
Two changes:
titlestring containing an unescaped:) from invalidating a note’s frontmatter.I used this myself, along with obsidian-front-matter-title and notebook-navigator, to smooth my transition from Evernote. I figured it may be useful to others in a similar situation.
The code around Yarle template-handling is pretty complex, so I’ve done my best to work out how to integrate the YAML escaping. But if there’s a different way you’d like me to re-attempt it, let me know.
I guess, also, there’s nothing about these features which are especially Evernote-specific. Users importing from other sources may equally want their YAML frontmatter to be escaped, and even for note titles and dates to be imported as frontmatter values. If that’s the case, I’m happy to generalise this code to work for all importers, but I may need some pointers from you on where best to make these changes.
Happy also to re-submit these commits as two separate PRs, as I realise they’re technically solving two separate issues.