Obsidian freeform plugin. This lets you write arbitrary JavaScript, including importing ESM modules, injecting styles, and much more.
This brings a taste of Observable to Obsidian. Some common elements include:
- You can write blocks of code which run in a light sandboxed environment
- You can use
import
statements to import modules from URLs, using services like esm.sh or jsdelivr. export
statements are supported too, but have no effect.require()
is not supported. JSX is also not supported, yet.- There's a
display()
function to show values and elements, just like Observable Framework's explicit display system.
Everything you write is run within a sandboxed iframe, making it safer to do more creative coding within Obsidian without affecting the surrounding page.
Install the freeform plugin, and create a fenced code block with the language
set to freeform
. For example:
```freeform
display(42);
```
That should, once you're done editing it and have clicked away from the code block,
show the number 42. Now you've learned all of the concepts in freeform! It's
JavaScript, and you can use the display()
method to show a value. See the rest
of this readme for some examples.
CleanShot.2024-05-18.at.16.16.52.mp4
You can easily import Observable Plot and use it with Freeform.
```freeform
import * as Plot from "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@observablehq/[email protected]/+esm";
const widths = [
["Val Town", 1024],
["Val Town (after)", 900],
["GitHub", 830],
["Radicle", 723],
["Replicate", 653],
["Glitch", 612],
["GitLab", 842],
["Observable", 640]
].map(([name, width]) => ({ name, width }))
display(Plot.barX(widths, {
x: "width",
y: "name",
marginLeft: 100,
fill: "name"
}).plot({ height: 400, width }))
```
Most npm modules that are compatible with browsers are available from https://esm.sh/, jsdelivr, unpkg, or skypack. Observable Plot is an especially tricky one, but most "just work."
```freeform
import { min } from "https://esm.sh/simple-statistics";
display(min([1, 2, 3]))
```
Freeform doesn't support JSX syntax (yet) but frameworks like Preact can work without it.
```freeform
import { h, render } from 'https://esm.sh/preact';
// Create your app
const app = h('h1', null, 'Hello World!');
render(app, document.body);
```
- There is a
width
variable, much like Observable's, but it is not live-updating or reactive. This project does not include Observable-style reactivity: your JavaScript runs just the same way as it does on any webpage. - Only HTTP ESM imports are supported. This isn't Node.js or Deno - there isn't a node_modules directory, and you don't have short names for dependencies. Thankfully, this usually isn't a problem because you can use https://esm.sh/ https://www.jsdelivr.com/ and more to import modules.
This plugin uses @observablehq/inspector as
the display()
method.