Add url_only option to random_picture to improve plugin compability

[JBrandonS]

This patch adds a url_only option to tf.web.random_picture() to enable better compatibility with other plugins, i.e. Banners. This value defaults to false to maintain the current behavior. Documentation has been updated to add this option.

[slambert]

I was just looking for this! Would love to see it merged.

[JBrandonS]

@slambert

In the mean time, what I have done is save the following script and enabled it in templater settings. This allows you to use the function and not have to use a custom version.

I wish I had kept attribution for the real author of this code but I found it somewhere online.

// scripts/random_banner.js
async function random_banner(size, query) {
	const resp = await fetch(`https://source.unsplash.com/random/${size ?? ""}?${query ?? ""}`);
	if (!resp.ok) {
		return "Error: Couldn't fetch banner";
	}
	return resp.url;
}

module.exports = random_banner;

Example usage:

---
cssclass: note
aliases:
tags:
banner: "<% tp.user.random_banner("1080x800", "banner," + tp.file.title) %>"
---

[slambert]

Being sort of tenacious I kept going and trying to solve it myself without the code.

I spent some time and figured out the unsplash URL structure. A lot of stuff I found about the URL structure is out of date and no longer works.

Here's what works best:

https://source.unsplash.com/random?sig=UNIQUESTRING/&SEARCHTERM

So

https://source.unsplash.com/random?sig=1/&birthday
https://source.unsplash.com/random?sig=2/&birthday

would give you this:

But I didn't want repeat images if I had the same search term, so I needed that sig= value to be more complex that just 1 or 2.

So for a daily note, I used the name of the note as the string. I just change the search keyword every so often depending on my mood:
banner: "https://source.unsplash.com/random?sig=<% tp.file.title.slice(0,10) %>/&abstract"

And for other files, I used the file creation date for the string. I also added a prompt so I could enter in a keyword for the image.

banner: "https://source.unsplash.com/random?<% tp.file.creation_date("YYYYmmDDHHmm") %>/&<% tp.system.prompt('What photo?', 'abstract', false, false) %>"

And it works!

I didn't bother trying I tried to incorporate a size specification into the URL because I am tenacious. But couldn't get anything to work. Again, everything I found in a search was out of date or didn't work.