Import

Summary

Import Markdown files stored locally with the Import Pod command, and dendron.markdown.

The pod finds all files from the root, and copies over the files into your vault, cleaning the file names to fit Dendron's naming hierarchy. You can see an example below.

Example

• Original

.
└── projects
    ├── p1
    │   ├── one.md
    │   ├── two.md
    │   └── one.pdf
    └── p2
        ├── three.md
        ├── four.md
        └── three.gif

• After Import

.
└── vault
    ├── assets
    │   ├── one-{uuid}.pdf
    │   └── three-{uuid}.gif
    ├── projects.p1.md
    ├── projects.p1.one.md
    ├── projects.p1.two.md
    ├── projects.p2.md
    ├── projects.p2.three.md
    └── projects.p2.four.md

Non-Markdown files within a directory will be moved into the assets folder of your vault. A uuid will be added to non-Markdown file names to ensure it does not overwrite any existing files. A link of the original filename will be made in the note that corresponds to the imported directory

...
# Imported Assets
- [one.pdf](assets/one-c91d4cb3-1db8-4703-884f-c4f5f9a00734.pdf)

Note that all files starting with a . will be ignored during the import.

Configuration

noAddUUID

• default: false
• description: if set, don't append random uuid to asset files

indexName

• default: none

If set, match the given indexName and combine it with the imported directory. For example, some services like gitbook will use index.md as an index for a directory.

.
└── foo/
    ├── index.md
    ├── one.md
    └── two.md

A naive import into Dendron will result in the following files

.
├── foo.index.md
├── foo.one.md
└── foo.two.md

If you set indexName to index (matching is case insensitive and doesn't require the extension), the import will result in the following instead

.
├── foo.md
├── foo.one.md
└── foo.two.md

In this example, the contents of index.md were combined with foo.md

importFrontmatter

• default: true
• type: boolean

If set, imports the note metadata as well. If there is any conflict between note's metadata and dendron's frontmatter, the Markdown Import Pod appends _imported to the metadata. If you want to have your conflicted metadata map to a key, you can define that in the frontmatterMapping config.

By default, Dendron adds id, created, updated, desc, and title fields to the frontmatter.

Example

Frontmatter within markdown note that will be imported:

id: original-note-id
title: original-note-title
author: Markus Zusak

Frontmatter of new Dendron note after import, if file was named markus-zusak-writings.md:

id: ERSdVKMDkkwFnJGHUBGFR
title: Markus Zusak Writings 
author: Markus Zusak
id_imported: original-note-id
title_imported: original-note-title

frontmatterMapping

• type: object
• description: mapping of metadata keys.

You cannot map keys to default Dendron keys such as id, created, updated, desc, and title. These are reserved by Dendron.

Example

• config

importFrontmatter: true
frontmatterMapping: { id: obsidianId}

• For a note with following contents

---
author: Markus Zusak
status: In progress
id: foo
tags:
  - scope.reading
  - size.medium
---

The story in the book was recounted by a male voice called Death, who proved to be caring yet morose throughout the book.

• The imported note will look like

---
id: ERSdVKMDkkwFnJGHUBGFR
title: The Book Thief
desc: ''
updated: 1642498483045
created: 1642498483045
stub: false
isDir: false
author: Markus Zusak
status: In progress
tags:
  - scope.reading
  - size.medium
obsidianId: foo
---

The story in the book was recounted by a male voice called Death, who proved to be caring yet morose throughout the book.

Links

If you are importing from tools like Obsidian that support wiki-links, Dendron will convert those wiki-links to Dendron's dot based format (eg. [[project/p1]] -> [[project.p1]])

---

Backlinks

• Changelog
• FAQ
• 0.3.X
• 0.78
• 0.80
• Seeding Digital Gardens and Connecting Second Brains
• Markdown Pod
• 20 - Your future self will thank you: Building your personal documentation
• Import