Find Org Roam notes via their relations
Too long; didn't read
Are you an org-roam user that takes a lot of notes and struggles finding them? I will share here a function to reach lost notes via their relations.
The problem
I like to read. A lot. And for a while I struggled at remembering good
quotes and concepts that I read in books. Things somewhat improved
when I got my e-reader. I could easily annotate text and move my notes
around. Then I started using org-roam. With it I could organize my
notes and discover them easily via org-roam-find-file. And it
went like that for a while, until... there were too many notes around!
My first adjustment was using org-roam-graph (long are gone the
times when I could plot all of my notes with the default command).
With that you can see notes as a navigable picture. The best situation
to consult these graphs of notes is when your notes link to each
other, because they will be closer to each other.
Anyway, give it enough time and the value of your notes will not be graphs but the links between different graphs. How can we explore them?
It is a problem indeed
Luckily I am not the only one having this issue! Somebody developed a
nice visualization web application for your notes (a serious upgrade
of org-roam-graph). Some other person has started ordering properly
notes via smart database queries. And somebody else
has
started analyzing relations between notes with statistics tools!
I tried all of these, but again: I got too many notes now. And I want a simple and quick tool to follow my note relations. So I spent some time searching around with little success. Then I asked myself: how difficult would it be to bake my own little function?
And there is a solution
My ideal function follows org-roam notes relations as if they were files in a file system. If a note does not have links, I can only open it, otherwise I can both navigate its directly related notes or open it.
Well that is what I need in words. Let me show you what I got!
/assets/blog/2021/03/12/find-org-roam-notes-via-their-relations/orgRoamFindNote.mp4
In the video I open my Tiramisu' recipe note. Then I follow its relations and I get to a new recipe. The relation I am using for this journey is "recipe". I use that as a linking note for my recipes.
The code for the function is below.
(defun my/navigate-note (arg &optional note choices)
"Navigate notes by link. With universal ARG tries to use only to navigate the tags of the current note. Optionally takes a selected NOTE and filepaths CHOICES."
(interactive "P")
(let* ((choices (or
choices
(when arg (org-roam-db--links-with-max-distance (buffer-file-name) 1))))
(all-notes (org-roam--get-title-path-completions))
(completions
(or (--filter (-contains-p choices (plist-get (cdr it) :path)) all-notes) all-notes))
(title-with-tags (org-roam-completion--completing-read "File: " completions))
(res (cdr (assoc title-with-tags completions)))
(next-note (plist-get res :path)))
(if (string= note next-note)
(find-file note)
(my/navigate-note nil next-note (org-roam-db--links-with-max-distance next-note 1)))))
Updated version for latest Org Roam v2.2.1:
(defun my/navigate-note (arg &optional note choices)
(interactive "P")
(let* ((completions (org-roam-node-read--completions))
(next-note (if (and (null note) (org-roam-node-at-point))
(org-roam-node-title (org-roam-node-at-point))
(completing-read "File: " (or choices completions))))
(candidates
(--> next-note
(assoc it completions)
cdr
org-roam-backlinks-get
(--map
(org-roam-node-title
(org-roam-backlink-source-node it))
it))))
(if (string= note next-note)
(org-roam-node-open (org-roam-node-from-title-or-alias note))
(my/navigate-note nil next-note (or candidates (list next-note))))))
A recursive function! The design is: gather all the notes you have, let the user pick one, gather the notes linked to that, let the user pick one, ..., if the user picks the same note twice, it means the user really wanted that: so open it.
There is a bit of noise in there due to translating file paths to note
links, but roughly that's it. Note that if you are in a note and call
the function with the C-u universal prefix, it reduces the initial
scope to the links of the open note. That is useful if you want to
skip a step when you know what you are looking for.
I thought about making something fancier than this, but then I thought: why bother? It works and I am the only user for now. Let me know if this gives problems to you.
Update for V2
Org Roam changed recently, so the above does not work for V2. This is the updated function:
(defun my/navigate-note (arg &optional node choices)
"Navigate notes by link. With universal ARG tries to use only to navigate the tags of the current note. Optionally takes a selected NOTE and filepaths CHOICES."
(interactive "P")
(let* ((depth (if (numberp arg) arg 1))
(choices
(or choices
(when arg
(-map #'org-roam-backlink-target-node (org-roam-backlinks-get (org-roam-node-from-id (or (ignore-errors (org-roam-node-id node))
(org-id-get-create))))))))
(all-notes (org-roam-node--completions))
(completions
(or (--filter (-contains-p choices (cdr it)) all-notes) all-notes))
(next-node
;; taken from org-roam-node-read
(let* ((nodes completions)
(node (completing-read
"Node: "
(lambda (string pred action)
(if (eq action 'metadata)
'(metadata
(annotation-function . (lambda (title)
(funcall org-roam-node-annotation-function
(get-text-property 0 'node title))))
(category . org-roam-node))
(complete-with-action action nodes string pred))))))
(or (cdr (assoc node nodes))
(org-roam-node-create :title node)))
)
)
(if (equal node next-node)
(org-roam-node-visit node)
(my/navigate-note nil next-node (cons next-node (-map #'org-roam-backlink-source-node (org-roam-backlinks-get next-node)))))))
Conclusion
From great powers come great responsibilities! Make the best out of your notes relations! After loading this function in your Emacs, please be fabulous by creating some incredible knowledge that makes us all better.
Happy discovering!