obsidian-export/docs/usage-advanced.md

Advanced usage

Frontmatter

By default, frontmatter is copied over "as-is".

Some static site generators are picky about frontmatter and require it to be present. Some get tripped up when Markdown files don't have frontmatter but start with a list item or horizontal rule. In these cases, --frontmatter=always can be used to insert an empty frontmatter entry.

To completely remove any frontmatter from exported notes, use --frontmatter=never.

Ignoring files

By default, hidden files, patterns listed in .export-ignore as well as any files ignored by git (if your vault is part of a git repository) will be excluded from exports.

These options may be adjusted with --hidden, --ignore-file and --no-git if desired. (See --help for more information).

Notes linking to ignored notes will be unlinked (they'll only include the link text). Embeds of ignored notes will be skipped entirely.

Ignorefile syntax

The syntax for .export-ignore files is identical to that of gitignore files. Here's an example:

# Ignore the directory private that is located at the top of the export tree
/private
# Ignore any file or directory called `test`
test
# Ignore any PDF file
*.pdf
# ..but include special.pdf
!special.pdf

For more comprehensive documentation and examples, see the gitignore manpage.

Recursive embeds

It's possible to end up with "recursive embeds" when two notes embed each other. This happens for example when a Note A.md contains ![[Note B]] but Note B.md also contains ![[Note A]].

By default, this will trigger an error and display the chain of notes which caused the recursion.

This behavior may be changed by specifying --no-recursive-embeds. Using this mode, if a note is encountered for a second time while processing the original note, instead of embedding it again a link to the note is inserted instead to break the cycle.

Relative links with Hugo

The Hugo static site generator does not support relative links to files. Instead, it expects you to link to other pages using the ref and relref shortcodes.

As a result of this, notes that have been exported from Obsidian using obsidian-export do not work out of the box because Hugo doesn't resolve these links correctly.

Markdown Render Hooks (only supported using the default goldmark renderer) allow you to work around this issue however, making exported notes work with Hugo after a bit of one-time setup work.

Create the file layouts/_default/_markup/render-link.html with the following contents:

{{- $url := urls.Parse .Destination -}}
{{- $scheme := $url.Scheme -}}

<a href="
  {{- if eq $scheme "" -}}
    {{- if strings.HasSuffix $url.Path ".md" -}}
      {{- relref .Page .Destination | safeURL -}}
    {{- else -}}
      {{- .Destination | safeURL -}}
    {{- end -}}
  {{- else -}}
    {{- .Destination | safeURL -}}
  {{- end -}}"
  {{- with .Title }} title="{{ . | safeHTML }}"{{- end -}}>
  {{- .Text | safeHTML -}}
</a>

{{- /* whitespace stripped here to avoid trailing newline in rendered result caused by file EOL */ -}}

And layouts/_default/_markup/render-image.html for images:

{{- $url := urls.Parse .Destination -}}
{{- $scheme := $url.Scheme -}}

<img src="
  {{- if eq $scheme "" -}}
    {{- if strings.HasSuffix $url.Path ".md" -}}
      {{- relref .Page .Destination | safeURL -}}
    {{- else -}}
      {{- printf "/%s%s" .Page.File.Dir .Destination | safeURL -}}
    {{- end -}}
  {{- else -}}
    {{- .Destination | safeURL -}}
  {{- end -}}"
  {{- with .Title }} title="{{ . | safeHTML }}"{{- end -}}
  {{- with .Text }} alt="{{ . | safeHTML }}"
  {{- end -}}
/>

{{- /* whitespace stripped here to avoid trailing newline in rendered result caused by file EOL */ -}}

With these hooks in place, links to both notes as well as file attachments should now work correctly.

Note: If you're using a theme which comes with it's own render hooks, you might need to do a little extra work, or customize the snippets above, to avoid conflicts with the hooks from your theme.