mdast-util-remove-wiki-links and mdast-util-wiki-links

[aegatlin]

I have seen https://github.com/landakram/remark-wiki-link and https://github.com/flowershow/remark-wiki-link-plus. I am still understanding their codebases, so apologize if I'm confused in this post.

I was thinking there is a way to turn a mdast-paragraph into [mdast-paragraph, mdast-link, mdast-paragraph].

In the [[middle]] of the sentence. => ['In the ', '[middle](/middle)', ' of the sentence.']

I'm imagining a simple mdast util that will do this. As well as one that will remove them, too.

In the [[middle]] of the sentence. => In the middle of the sentence.

I naively began parsing a mdast paragraph node for its p.children.map({ value } => ...) before realizing that was probably naive in some way because I've never contributed to this community before. Wound up here after reading: https://github.com/syntax-tree/mdast#contribute

Over the coming weeks I will hope to drive out some solutions along these lines, so any feedback is much appreciated. I'm sure yall are busy, so thank you for taking the time to read. <3

(PS, I love this ecosystem. You are doing a great job :D <3 I'm a very happy user!)

[ChristianMurphy]

Welcome @aegatlin 👋

For

I'm imagining a simple mdast util that will do this. As well as one that will remove them, too.

In the [[middle]] of the sentence. => In the middle of the sentence.

I'd recommend using an existing wikilink parser (like https://github.com/landakram/remark-wiki-link).
Then creating an AST plugin similar to https://github.com/remarkjs/remark-unwrap-images to unwrap the text inside wiki links.
https://unifiedjs.com/learn/ introduces working with ASTs and creating plugins.

[aegatlin]

I think this is what I needed to hear. Thank you for the feedback. I think I have some more research to do! 🙏

[aegatlin]

Hello, here is the updated utility PoC: https://github.com/aegatlin/remark-wiki-links-to-links

Notably, the example.js file where I printed the mdast pre and post transform.

I imagine there are still good objections coming, so I want to make sure that I give you the 👍 to continuing to critiquing what I've done, and what I'm thinking. So, please critique away! Here are some of my thoughts:

1. This seems good enough conceptually?
2. I still don't love the API options, { toUri }, but I think it's simplicity is an improvement for use cases similar to mine.
3. It would be nice to eventually replace the underlying micromark extension (micromark-extenstion-wiki-link) with something that doesn't presume an eventual html target. It could perhaps be something as "simple" as { type: 'wikiLink', value: [insert-value-here], data: { alias: [insert-alias-here] } }. This could be a transparent swap to users of this lib.
4. Such an extension could trickle up to a mdast extension. Essentially mimicking the original extensions all the way up, minus the presumption of html at the end. This could be a transparent swap to users of this lib.
5. In the lib itself I feel like I should "just" use unist-util-visit to replace the node, but couldn't figure out how to do that from the docs. It uses SKIP somehow, but was too confused. If there's a good example of using visit instead of map to do simple replacements, I could update the docs for visit.
6. Alternatively, perhaps a unist-util-replace with a similar api to unist-util-visit could be a useful addition to the community?

I hope I don't sound too presumptuous about what I've done. This is all thanks to yalls great feedback, and I hope to continue receiving it. Thank you for everything thus far 🙏 ❤️

[wooorm]

1. yes
2. agreed, but I’ll leave that up to you. I don’t know enough about your use case
3. I disagree, micromark-extension-wiki-link, like any micromark extension, does not describe the AST. It would not need changing for yo to reach your goals. It would be somewhere in mdast-util-wiki-link instead
4. sure but depends on 3
5. https://unifiedjs.com/learn/recipe/remove-node/#replacing-a-node-with-its-children.
   I’d extremely strongly suggest using visit for everything. Do not use filter/map
6. I don’t know what you are thinking of unist-util-replace to perform

[aegatlin]

Hey all, thank you for all the feedback. I ended up reworking some of my stuff based on all this amazing feedback, and currently I have remark-obsidian-link.

I'm using it on my website to parse obsidian. My website is private but I have some utility functions from it in another repo call metamark, within which I build a toLink function from a pageAllowSet provided by the user of metamark (code here).

It still has a toLink function, which I'm still not in love with, but still can't think of a better way. I like the runtime-nature of toLink, as well as the minimal, custom typings of WikiLink and Link. But, I also know these things might be too bespoke to be useful to the community writ large. I hope to clarify my thinking further as I work with these projects.

I just wanted to send this as a wrap up to this phase of my work. And tell yall how infinitely appreciative I am for your feedback on this ❤️ . I suspect yall won't much like what I've ended up with, and neither do I 😆 , but at least wanted to share since this thread was so helpful to me.

😄 ❤️ 👍

[wooorm]

Glad to hear Austin! :)