obsidian-parser

Blazingly fast Rust library for parsing and analyzing Obsidian vaults.

Features

• ⚡ High Performance: Parses 1000+ notes in under 3ms
• 🧠 Knowledge Graphs: Built-in integration with petgraph for advanced analysis
• 🧩 Flexible API: Supports both in-memory and on-disk note representations
• 🔍 Frontmatter Parsing: Extract YAML properties with serde compatibility
• 🌐 Link Analysis: Identify connections between notes

Quick Start

Add to Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
obsidian-parser = "0.2"

Basic Usage

• Parsing

use obsidian_parser::prelude::*;
use serde::Deserialize;

// Parse single file with `HashMap`
let note_hashmap = ObFileInMemory::from_file_default("note.md").unwrap();

println!("Content: {}", note_hashmap.content());
println!("Properties: {:#?}", note_hashmap.properties());

// Parse single file with custom struct
#[derive(Clone, Default, Deserialize)]
struct NoteProperties {
    created: String,
     tags: Vec<String>,
     priority: u8,
}

let note_with_serde: ObFileInMemory<NoteProperties> = ObFileInMemory::from_file("note.md").unwrap();

• Vault

use obsidian_parser::prelude::*;

// Open vault (defaults to on-disk representation for efficiency)
let vault = Vault::open_default("/path/to/vault")?;

// Check for duplicate note names (critical for graph operations)
if !vault.has_unique_filenames() {
    eprintln!("Duplicate note names detected!");
}
// Access parsed files
for file in &vault.files {
    println!("Note: {:?}", file.path());
}

Graph Analysis (requires petgraph feature)

Enable in Cargo.toml:

obsidian-parser = { version = "0.2", features = ["petgraph"] }
# obsidian-parser = { version = "0.2", features = ["petgraph", "rayon"] } is fast

Then:

use obsidian_parser::prelude::*;
use petgraph::dot::{Dot, Config};
let vault = Vault::open_default("/path/to/vault")?;
let graph = vault.get_digraph();
// Export to Graphviz format
println!("{:?}", Dot::with_config(&graph, &[Config::EdgeNoLabel]));
// Find most connected note
let most_connected = graph.node_indices()
    .max_by_key(|n| graph.edges(*n).count())
    .unwrap();
println!("Knowledge hub: {}", graph[most_connected]);

Example: Analyze Knowledge Connectivity

Included example analyzer calculates connected components in your Obsidian vault's knowledge graph:

cargo run --example analyzer --release --features="petgraph rayon" -- --path="Path to Obsidian vault"

Limitations

⚠️ Critical Requirement for Graph Analysis: All note filenames must be unique. Use vault.has_unique_filenames() to verify before calling get_digraph() or get_ungraph(). Why? Notes are identified by filename in graph operations. Duplicates will cause incorrect graph construction.

Performance

My PC AMD Ryzen 5 3600X with NVMe SSD

License

MIT © CryptoGladi