Bulk create topics from Obsidian

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The discussion title is: Bulk create topics from Obsidian. alltiagocom is looking for a way to import 120+ journal entries from Obsidian as topics in Discourse, with specific timestamps. Arkshine suggests a plugin called “Publish to Discourse,” but it does not support bulk publishing. alltiagocom finds the tool helpful, as it allows them to publish notes with the title, category, and date. They plan to update the dates in Obsidian and then import them to Discourse. Canapin mentions that Discourse’s API can be useful for importing a large number of topics, and a Ruby script could also be an option. However, alltiagocom is not familiar with APIs and prefers to use the plugin.

1

I have 120+ journal entries that I created in Obsidian, so they are markdown files.
Is there a way to import all of them as topics without having to create each topic by hand? If so, it’s also important that the timestamp is very specific, because there’s a “timeline”. Even if the timestamp thing wouldn’t be possible, at least being able to just create all topics at once would be great. I still need to make some adjustments anyway, to images in particular, but it would save me some work.

3

There is a Obsidian plugin to publish on Discourse, but I have no idea if it can help you in this context:

This image displays the interface of a third-party tool named "Publish to Discourse" with version number 1.0.17 by "woodchen," alongside a GitHub repository link and an option to post notes to the Discourse forum. (Captioned by AI)
This image displays the interface of a third-party tool named "Publish to Discourse" with version number 1.0.17 by "woodchen," alongside a GitHub repository link and an option to post notes to the Discourse forum. (Captioned by AI)543×199 6.71 KB

From a quick test, you would have to manually tell what note to publish. There is no bulk publishing. It’s still faster than creating a topic, copy/paste title/content.

4

This is indeed a great tool. Thank you so much for sharing!
And it’s great, because:

1 - The title of the note is the title of the Discourse topic
2 - I can pick the category I want to import to
3 - When I wrote those notes I added the date as the first line like this: Dec 03, 2022. Now with the help of Keyboard Maestro I created a macro to replace it to this 2022-12-03. That means I just need to update all dates to that format in Obsidian first, and when I import it to the forum, I can quickly add the date to the Change Timestamp field.

Time saver for sure, even if I have to do it one by one. Definitely better than creating them manually, copying, pasting, etc. You’re a life saver! :slight_smile:

And by the way, happy birthday!!! Hope you have a great day :birthday_cake:

5

When there’s a matter of importing a certain number of topics, Discourse’s API can be very valuable.
If there was no existing Obsidian plugin to do this import, you’d probably rely on this.

Alternatively, a Ruby script could also do the job. ask.discourse.org can return reliable output for this kind of task.

6

Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with APIs. I know they exist, I know they connect 2 or more things, but that’s pretty much it.

To be honest, for a musician, I already know more than I expected to ever know when it comes to this kind of “tech-talk” :wink:

I’m glad I learned it, though, because it allows me to do a lot of things myself that would require lots of different people and of course, lots of investment.