Editors integration¶

There are several extensions available to integrate zk in your favorite editor:

zk-nvim for Neovim.
zk-vscode for Visual Studio Code

Language Server Protocol¶

zk ships with a Language Server to provide basic support for any LSP-compatible editor. The currently supported features are:

Auto-complete Markdown links with [[ (setup wiki-links in the note formats configuration)
Auto-complete hashtags and colon-separated tags.
Preview the content of a note when hovering a link.
Navigate in your notes by following internal links.
Create a new note using the current selection as title.
Diagnostics for dead links and wiki-links titles.
And more to come…

You can configure some of these features in your notebook’s configuration file.

Editor LSP configurations¶

To start the Language Server, use the zk lsp command. Refer to the following sections for editor-specific examples. Feel free to share the configuration for your editor.

Vim and Neovim¶

Vim and Neovim 0.4¶

With coc.nvim, run :CocConfig and add the following in the settings file:

coc-settings.json

{
  // Important, otherwise link completion containing spaces and other special characters won't work.
  "suggest.invalidInsertCharacters": [],

  "languageserver": {
    "zk": {
      "command": "zk",
      "args": ["lsp"],
      "trace.server": "messages",
      "filetypes": ["markdown"],
    },
  },
}

Here are some additional useful key bindings and custom commands:

~/.config/nvim/init.vim

" User command to index the current notebook.
"
" zk.index expects a notebook path as first argument, so we provide the current
" buffer path with expand("%:p").
command! -nargs=0 ZkIndex :call CocAction("runCommand", "zk.index", expand("%:p"))
nnoremap <leader>zi :ZkIndex<CR>

" User command to create and open a new note, to be called like this:
" :ZkNew {"title": "An interesting subject", "dir": "inbox", ...}
"
" Note the concatenation with the "edit" command to open the note right away.
command! -nargs=? ZkNew :exec "edit ".CocAction("runCommand", "zk.new", expand("%:p"), <args>).path

" Create a new note after prompting for its title.
nnoremap <leader>zn :ZkNew {"title": input("Title: ")}<CR>
" Create a new note in the directory journal/daily.
nnoremap <leader>zj :ZkNew {"dir": "journal/daily"}<CR>

Neovim built-in LSP client¶

Using nvim-lspconfig:

~/.config/nvim/init.lua

local lspconfig = require('lspconfig')
local configs = require('lspconfig/configs')

configs.zk = {
  default_config = {
    cmd = {'zk', 'lsp'},
    filetypes = {'markdown'},
    root_dir = function()
      return vim.loop.cwd()
    end,
    settings = {}
  };
}

lspconfig.zk.setup({ on_attach = function(client, buffer)
  -- Add keybindings here, see https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig#keybindings-and-completion
end })

Sublime Text¶

Install the Sublime LSP package, then run the Preferences: LSP Settings command. Add the following to the settings file:

LSP.sublime-settings

{
  "clients": {
    "zk": {
      "enabled": true,
      "command": ["zk", "lsp"],
      "languageId": "markdown",
      "scopes": ["source.markdown"],
      "syntaxes": ["Packages/MarkdownEditing/Markdown.sublime-syntax"],
    },
  },
}

Visual Studio Code¶

Install the zk-vscode extension from the Marketplace.

Custom commands¶

Using zk’s LSP custom commands, you can call zk commands right from your editor. Please refer to your editor’s documentation on how to bind keyboard shortcuts to custom LSP commands.

`zk.index`¶

This LSP command calls zk index to refresh your notebook’s index. It can be useful to make sure that the auto-completion is up-to-date. zk.index takes two arguments:

A path to a file or directory in the notebook to index.
(Optional) A dictionary of additional options (click to expand)

Key

Type

Description

force

boolean

Reindexes all the notes when true

Key	Type	Description
`force`	boolean	Reindexes all the notes when true

zk.index returns a dictionary of indexing statistics.

`zk.new`¶

This LSP command calls zk new to create a new note. It can be useful to quickly create a new note with a key binding. zk.new takes two arguments:

A path to any file or directory in the notebook, to locate it.

(Optional) A dictionary of additional options (click to expand)

Key	Type	Description
`title`	string	Title of the new note
`content`	string	Initial content of the note
`dir`	string	Parent directory, relative to the root of the notebook
`group`	string	Note configuration group
`template`	string	Custom template used to render the note
`extra`	dictionary	A dictionary of extra variables to expand in the template
`date`	string	A date of creation for the note in natural language, e.g. “tomorrow”
`edit`	boolean	When true, the editor will open the newly created note (not supported by all editors)
`dryRun`	boolean	When true, `zk` will not actually create the note on the file system, but will return its generated content and path
`insertLinkAtLocation`	location¹	A location in another note where a link to the new note will be inserted
`insertContentAtLocation`	location¹	A location in another note where the content of the new note will be inserted

The location type is an LSP Location object, for example:

{
  "uri": "file:///Users/mickael/notes/9se3.md",
  "range": {
    "end": { "line": 5, "character": 149 },
    "start": { "line": 5, "character": 137 }
  }
}

zk.new returns a dictionary with two properties:

path containing the absolute path to the created note.
content containing the raw content of the created note.

`zk.link`¶

This LSP command allows editors to tap into the note linking mechanism. It takes three arguments:

A path to any file in the notebook that will be linked to
An LSP location object that points to where the link will be inserted
An optional title of the link. If title is not provided, the title of the note will be inserted instead

zk.link returns a JSON object with the path to the linked note, if the linking was successful.

Note: This command is not exposed in the command line. This command is targeted at editor / plugin authors to extend zk functionality.

`zk.list`¶

This LSP command calls zk list to search a notebook. It takes two arguments:

A path to any file or directory in the notebook, to locate it.

A dictionary of additional options (click to expand)

Key	Type	Required?	Description
`select`	string array	Yes	List of note fields to return¹
`hrefs`	string array	No	Find notes matching the given path, including its descendants
`limit`	integer	No	Limit the number of notes found
`match`	string array	No	Terms to search for in the notes
`exactMatch`	boolean	No	(deprecated: use `matchStrategy`) Search for exact occurrences of the `match` argument (case insensitive)
`matchStrategy`	string	No	Specify match strategy, which may be “fts” (default), “exact” or “re”
`excludeHrefs`	string array	No	Ignore notes matching the given path, including its descendants
`tags`	string array	No	Find notes tagged with the given tags
`mention`	string array	No	Find notes mentioning the title of the given ones
`mentionedBy`	string array	No	Find notes whose title is mentioned in the given ones
`linkTo`	string array	No	Find notes which are linking to the given ones
`linkedBy`	string array	No	Find notes which are linked by the given ones
`orphan`	boolean	No	Find notes which are not linked by any other note
`tagless`	boolean	No	Find notes which have no tags
`related`	string array	No	Find notes which might be related to the given ones
`maxDistance`	integer	No	Maximum distance between two linked notes
`recursive`	boolean	No	Follow links recursively
`created`	string	No	Find notes created on the given date
`createdBefore`	string	No	Find notes created before the given date
`createdAfter`	string	No	Find notes created after the given date
`modified`	string	No	Find notes modified on the given date
`modifiedBefore`	string	No	Find notes modified before the given date
`modifiedAfter`	string	No	Find notes modified after the given date
`sort`	string array	No	Order the notes by the given criterion

As the output of this command might be very verbose and put a heavy load on the LSP client, you need to explicitly set which note fields you want to receive with the select option. The following fields are available: filename, filenameStem, path, absPath, title, lead, body, snippets, rawContent, wordCount, tags, metadata, created, modified and checksum.

zk.list returns the found notes as a JSON array.

`zk.tag.list`¶

This LSP command calls zk tag list to return the list of tags in a notebook. It takes two arguments:

A path to any file or directory in the notebook, to locate it.
(Optional) A dictionary of additional options (click to expand)

Key

Type

Required?

Description

sort

string array

No

Order the tags by the given criteria¹
1. The available sort criteria are name and note-count. You can change the order by appending - or + to the criterion.

Key	Type	Required?	Description
`sort`	string array	No	Order the tags by the given criteria¹

zk.tag.list returns the tags as a JSON array.