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Rewrite Wikilinks in your Zettelkasten as Markdown Links

This repository contains a Python script that can take a folder of Markdown files (or any other compatible format) and convert any links that are in [[wikilink]] format into the standard Markdown link format.

Why?

Most Zettelkasten software today will handle linking between different notes by adding a link using the [[wikilink]] syntax. This is great for reading and writing within the Zettelkasten ecosystem but almost no standard Markdown renderer will automatically recognize the [[wikilink]] syntax. This script attempts to give you more inter-operability with other Markdown software by converting [[wikilinks]] into standard Markdown [wikilink](wikilink) syntax.

Features

  • Fully cross-platform. Script was developed in a Windows environment and is extensively tested to work in Windows.
  • Provides a number of parameters to configure the script. Parameters can be specified either on the command-line or via a configuration file. Refer to zettel_link_rewriter.ini to see an example.
  • Handles links within Markdown code blocks correctly, i.e., does not rewrite them. This includes fenced code blocks, inline code snippets and code blocks indented with four spaces. Do note the Caveats though.
  • Minimal dependencies. The script requires only one additional package to be installed (which is because Python's built-in argparse module is terrible.)

Dependencies

  • Python 3.4 or higher (Script has only been tested with Python 3.8)
  • List of packages specified in requirements.txt

Getting Started

You can use this script by cloning the repo and installing Python and the script dependencies in a Python venv.

git clone https://github.com/balaji-dutt/zettel-link-rewriter.git
python -m venv .venv
./venv/scripts/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python zettel_link_rewriter.py

Running the script as shown above will make the script run with a set of built-in defaults. But you can configure the script either by supplying a list of parameters on the command-line:

python zettel_link_rewriter.py -v debug -p all --target_files ./dest/

Or you can configure the script by passing a path to a configuration file:

python zettel_link_rewriter.py -c myconfig.ini

An explanation of the different parameters the script recognizes are provided below.

Parameters

Parameter Mandatory Description
-h No Show a help message
-c / --config No Specify path to Configuration file.
By default, the script will look for a configuration file named zettel_link_rewriter.ini in the same directory
-v No Verbosity option. Configures the logging level for the script. You can specify 3 levels of verbosity - warning/info/debug. The default is warning
-f / --file No Write log messages to a file instead of on the console.
--source_files No Specify path to directory containing source markdown files to be processed.
Default is to use a "source" folder in the current directory.
--target_files No Specify path to directory where processed markdown files should be saved.
Default is to use a "dest" folder in the current directory.
The folder where markdown files should be saved after processing will be created if it does not exist.
-p / --process No Flag to tell the script whether it should process all files in the source directory or only receently modified files.
The parameter supports two values - all or modified
-m / --minutes No Specify in minutes the time-limit for finding recently modified files. Can be used with -p modified option.
If this is not specified, the script will use a default value of 60 minutes.

Caveats

  • In order to avoid processing wikilinks inside code blocks, the script will ignore lines beginning with 4 spaces. However, this means that a wikilink in a list that is on the 3rd level or deeper will not be converted. In other words:
- [[Level 1 wikilink]] # Will be converted
  - [[Level 2 wikilink]] # Will be converted
    - [[Level 3 wikilink]] # Will *NOT BE* converted
      - Any wikilinks in this level or deeper will also not be converted.