Hi Everyone,

TL;DR: I've recently started using org-capture and I'd like to run org-attach-attach during the expansion of a few of my templates. Doing so from a template function seems not to work (meaning a function in a template string called with %(…)). What's the best way to go about this?

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I've recently started to explore org-capture and it's pretty great. I'm interested in having one of my templates search for a file somewhere and, if it finds one, add it to the current template as an attachment.

My initial test template looks something like:

(defun attach-file
    ()
  (org-attach-attach (expand-file-name "a file")
                     nil
                     'cp))

(setq org-capture-templates
      '("T" "TEST" entry
        (file+headline "~/x.org" "Inbox")
        "* TODO Foo%(attach-file)

  %U"))

The idea being that attach-file would call org-attach-attach if it could find a file and always expand to nothing.

Upon testing that I see the following (org 9.4.5-g287af2, emacs 27.2 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin18.7.0)):

** TODO Foo%![Error: (error bug: org-id-get expects a file-visiting buffer)]
   :PROPERTIES:
   :ID:       05837793-5A4F-42FC-AB50-5165FA7ECC4B
   :END:

   [2021-04-29 Thu 09:52]

If I then call org-attach manually on the resulting entry I can attach a file fine to it.

I'm aware that I can make the template an elisp function and do the work all internally. That's probably what I'll start doing presently. But it's a little annoying that I then need to reimplement org-capture's built-in template expansion in some way (like %U for the current inactive timestamp).

I also believe I could do this with one of the org-capture hooks but examining them I didn't see the obvious right one to add my function to. I would think it would be the org-capture-prepare-finalize-hook and I may just give that a try. I further assume then that I'd need to to apply the advice here and check for what template I'm in with (plist-get org-capture-plist :key) or similar.

So my question is whether there's anything I can do to get org-attach-attach to recognize the file it's in. I'm assuming that when it's expanding it's in a temporary buffer of some kind which is why it's failing.

All thoughts and advice are most welcome. Thanks in advance! :)

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In Christ,

Timmy V.

https://blog.twonegatives.com
http://five.sentenc.es