This is a fork of a Smart Rename plugin for Obsidian that adds the command Smart Rename which performs the following steps after renaming the note:

1. Adds the previous title as an alias to the renamed note
2. Preserves the backlinks to the renamed note that were using previous title as a display text.

In addition to the orginal functionality it exposes API that allows to call a function to perform Smart Renaming programmatically. See example below.

The motivation for creating this fork for me was the use case of having existing links to non-existing files. When a critical mass of those links tells me I should create the file, I want to do it with my template and rename the file to include a timestamp (I use Zettelkasten), but preserve the old name as an alias, and in all the existing links I want to use it as a display text to not pollute links' texts with timestamps.

1. You have

OldName.md:

This is a note `OldName.md` that is going to be renamed to `NewName.md`.

OtherNote.md:

This note references

1. Wikilink [[OldName]]
2. Wikilink with the same display text [[OldName|OldName]]
3. Wikilink with a custom display text [[OldName|Custom display text]]
4. Markdown link [OldName](OldName.md)
5. Markdown link with a custom display text [Custom display text](OldName.md)

2. You invoke current plugin providing NewName as a new title

3. Now you have

NewName.md:

---
aliases:
  - OldName
---

This is a note `OldName.md` that is going to be renamed to `NewName.md`.

OtherNote.md:

This note references

1. Wikilink [[NewName|OldName]]
2. Wikilink with the same display text [[NewName|OldName]]
3. Wikilink with a custom display text [[NewName|Custom display text]]
4. Markdown link [OldName](NewName.md)
5. Markdown link with a custom display text [Custom display text](NewName.md)

Current plugin's aim is to preserve OldName display text in links 1, 2, 4

• Smart Rename API needs to be installed from source.
• Prerequesite: Node.js
• Download the code
• Navigate to the plugin directory.

cd obsidian-smart-rename-api

• Install dependencies.

npm install

• Compile the source code.

npm run build

• Copy the contents of dist/build folder to {YOUR_VAULT_PATH}/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-smart-rename-api
• In Obsidian go to Settings -> Community Plugins and click Reload Plugins button next to Installed Plugins. Then enable it.

• Create a new file to use a template with templater plugin (which should be installed and enabled):

<%*
const title = tp.file.title;
const date = tp.date.now("YYYYMMDDHHmmss");
const newTitle = `${date} ${title}`

const tFile = tp.file.find_tfile(tp.file.path(true))
app.fileManager.processFrontMatter(tFile, (frontmatter) => { frontmatter["tags"] = "📝"; 
	frontmatter["dg-publish"] = false; 
	frontmatter["related"] = null; 
	frontmatter["reference"] = null; 
	frontmatter["status"] = "🌱 Seedling"; 
	});


%>
# <%tp.file.title%>
<%tp.file.cursor(0)%>

<%* 
tp.hooks.on_all_templates_executed(async() => {
	await app.plugins.plugins["smart-rename-api"].api.smartRename(tFile)(newTitle)
})
_%>

• In any note create a link to a non-existing note:

[[New Note]]

• Click on the link to create that note
• PRESS ENTER (this is very important, so that the file is not totally empty when templater runs, otherwise it doesnt run correctly for some reason)
• In that new note run templater command Templater: Open Insert Template modal and select your template
• The New Note note should now be renamed with a timestamp and the link to it updated so that display text didnt change.

© Michael Naumov © Ryan Falcon