Feature Request: Export a markdown folder as a single document

[davidrsim-p]

Great plugin. I tend to break my writing projects into separate sections/chapters - sometimes a large number of them. I control their order by name e.g. 000 Introduction, 002 Chapter 1, 003 Chapter 1 Notes, 004 Chapter 2

What would be useful is if the export could be done on a folder. It would then run through the files in alphabetical order and export to the requested format as a single document. I know applications like Zettlr can do this for nested folders ("projects") but a single folder and its md content would be sufficient for me. The pandoc command itself is pretty straightforward - just passing multiple filenames as the input instead of just one.

I'd like to help but need to get my head around how plugins work first!

[OliverBalfour]

Hi David, that's an interesting idea. Currently, the best you can do is use Obsidian's note embedding syntax, like ![[note]].

Here's a workaround that does what you want, but it involves the terminal:

1. Run this command in the correct folder: ls | sed -e 's/^/![[/' | sed -e 's/$/]]/' > chapters.md. This will create a file embedding every note in that folder in alphabetical order, ie something like ![[000 Intro.md]] on each line
2. Add a YAML title, etc. to chapters.md
3. Export chapters.md to your desired format

When I add #27 I'll probably add a context menu option to export everything in a folder as well. I might instead make the button generate an index file like the chapters.md above so you can edit it before exporting it, I'll have to think about it. (note: relates to #10)

[filipaldi]

Hi @OliverBalfour,

I have a similar thing, but maybe a more thorough one. Here it is:

1. Same as @davidrsim-p I prefer to split (5+pages) document into sections. Sometimes I compose a document using those atomic thoughts.

2. Moreover, I collect my bibliography in markdown documents.
   a) sources
   b) citations

At the end my file looks like this:
"Some citation sentence."^[![[embeded_md_file]]]

with embeded_md_file which looks like this (depends on reference style)
Author Name, Source title, Year, and other fancy stuff.

I have edited obsidian CSS so it makes a nice list of footnotes that includes files from my bibliography.

However, when exporting out of obsidian nothing is included.

[evitiello]

I'd expand this a bit too - I want to export my whole obsidian vault as a single ePub. (currently ~2300 files)

[inkygirl]

I don't have as many files as evitiello above (2300, wow!) but tend to write in scenes rather than chapters, so would have several hundred. I rearrange the scenes in revision. I'm sure there's a techie way to have automatic file numbering of these scenes, which I will try to research, but would love to eventually be able to export many pieces. Would be happy to help contribute toward funding of this revised plugin!