Mermaid graphs in Obsidian and Hugo

In the note-taking software Obsidian you can create Mermaid plots by simply setting the language for your fenced code block to mermaid.

```mermaid
graph LR
A-->B 
```

graph LR
A-->B 

Since I write my blog in Obsidian and then render it using Hugo, I needed a method for adding Mermaid plots that would render fine in both Obsidian and Hugo.

Solution: Add Mermaid.js to your template’s footer. I added it to my header since the Ananke template doesn’t have an existing partial for putting things in the footer.

$ cat layouts/partials/head-additions.html
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mermaid/8.13.4/mermaid.min.js" integrity="sha512-JERecFUBbsm75UpkVheAuDOE8NdHjQBrPACfEQYPwvPG+fjgCpHAz1Jw2ci9EXmd3DdfiWth3O3CQvcfEg8gsA==" crossorigin="anonymous" referrerpolicy="no-referrer"></script>

<script>
  window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
      mermaid.init(undefined, ".language-mermaid");
  }, false)
</script>

This partially works, but using the Ananke template the chart is rendered inside a <pre> element with a black background, which looks horrible. Parent selectors aren’t a thing in CSS yet, so I just hacked away the parent element with some JavaScript.

  window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
    let codes = document.getElementsByClassName("language-mermaid");
    for (let code of codes) {
      let pre = code.parentElement;
      pre.before(code);
      pre.remove();
    }
	
	mermaid.init(undefined, ".language-mermaid");
  })

A small visualization of what happens here:

Initial state:. <code> is inside a <pre> which is inside some container.

graph LR;
Container --> Pre --> Code
Code -->|parent| Pre

Put <code> element into parent element along with <pre> with pre.before(code);.

graph LR;
Container --> Pre
Container --> Code

Then delete the <pre> element.

graph LR;
Container --> Code

This solution was inspired by the post Use mermaid with code fences found in the Hugo forums.

• hugo
• obsidian