Obsidian Tag Links

A plugin for Obsidian that allows tags to be opened as links using a hotkey.

You define regular expressions to match certain tags, then define link substitutions that use the captured values to build a URL, which is then opened automatically.

This is intended to tie into Obsidian's nested tag functionality. Personally, I use them for any kind of value where I have more than one entry that belongs to the same system: ticketing system IDs, pull requests, etc.

This allows you to use nested tags (making your notes more traceable) while still enabling easy access to their referenced data.

Installation

1. Install it like any other plugin.
2. Set a hotkey for the plugin's command in the settings (Settings -> Community plugins -> Tag Links -> Hotkeys (looks like a plus sign)).
   • If you're unsure what keyboard shortcut to use, I'd recommend Ctrl+Space.
3. Configure some tag link substitutions in the settings (Settings -> Community plugins -> Tag Links -> Options (looks like a gear)).
   • If you're new to using regular expressions, you can use https://regex101.com/ with the ECMAScript flavour to build your regular expressions and substitutions.

Usage

To use it, after configuring the substitutions in the settings, simply press your configured keyboard shortcut while your text cursor is on a tag.

Example

You might want to use tags to reference Jira tickets, and need to be able to open them easily. This is the use case that inspired this plugin in the first place.

My Jira tags look like this: #jira/<TICKET_ID> (i.e. #jira/PROJ-1234)

• The tag regular expression looks like: jira/(.+) (note that it does not include the leading # character)
• And the substitution looks like: https://jira.example.com/browse/$1

When I use my configured hotkey on #jira/PROJ-1234, the plugin opens https://jira.example.com/browse/PROJ-1234 in my browser.

Why Regular Expressions, Instead of Simple Prefixes?

Originally, the plugin was planned to work with simple prefixes - matching tags that started with a certain value.

This was changed to accommodate more complex cases where there are multiple pertinent values in a tag's structure, or the substitution needs to be placed in multiple locations in the URL. This solution provides much greater flexibility.