feat(notes): link notes to each other with markdown links

[karlitschek]

There was no way to link one note to another. Now there is, using ordinary markdown links whose target is the note's route:

[Shopping list](/index.php/apps/notes/note/42)

No custom syntax, so every editor renders them — the rich editor, the markdown preview, and anything else that reads the file. This is the same URL NoteReferenceProvider already matches, so a link pasted into Talk or a Text document still resolves to a rich preview.

The target is the file id rather than the title, so renaming a note cannot break a link to it. Only the visible label goes stale.

• "Copy link to note" in the note's action menu puts the markdown on the clipboard, label included, so linking is a paste rather than hand-writing a URL. It sits in the note list row menu, which is present in every editor mode.
• Clicking a note link routes inside the app instead of reloading the page. In rich mode that goes through Text's openLinkHandler hook; note that providing a handler replaces Text's default, so the fallback for every other link — open in a new tab — is reimplemented rather than lost. In preview mode the click is delegated from the preview container, because the rendered HTML is replaced wholesale on every edit.
• Modified clicks (ctrl, meta, shift, alt, middle button) are left alone so "open in new tab" keeps working, and links to another origin are never treated as note links.

Stale labels are refreshed on rename (NoteLinkService), with two limits, because this edits notes the user is not looking at:

• Only labels that still match the old title are rewritten. A link written as my weekly shop is the author's wording, not a stale copy of the title, and is left alone.
• Only explicit renames trigger it. Titles also change through autotitle, which fires while a new note is being typed, and sweeping the whole collection on each of those would be wasteful and surprising. The two are separate controller paths, so only updateProperty('title') is hooked.

A rename therefore costs one pass over the notes folder. That is the same O(n) content read as search, acceptable for an explicit, infrequent action.

🤖 AI (if applicable)

• The content of this PR was partly or fully generated using AI

[Copilot]

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[enjeck]

Might fix #1131 and #951 and #1524

[enjeck]

Thanks, it would be nice to have this as it's a popular feature request!

Some questions:

[enjeck]

I'm worried about this replacement. What if I edit a note to a title with containing ]?

[enjeck]

escapeReplacement only escapes the preg_replace specials $ and \. It does not escape ]

[enjeck]

maybe adding something like the replace [ in noteLinkMarkdown helps

[enjeck]

same here. What if i have a note titled Test]

[enjeck]

Not sure about this. getAll(...) and linkPattern(...) sit outside the per note try/catch, and they could throw

[enjeck]

do we need to lock while doing this or nah? why or why not?

[enjeck]

Is it really ready to past into another note? Cuz this gives a relative link that is likely not immediately useful 🤔

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 6 out of 6 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

Suppressed comments (4)

src/components/NoteRich.vue:117

• openLinkHandler() constructs a URL without guarding against empty/malformed href values. If href is '' it will open the current page in a new tab; if href is malformed, new URL(...) will throw and break link handling.

							.catch(() => {})
						return
					}
					window.open(new URL(href, window.location.href).href, '_blank', 'noopener')
				},

lib/Service/NoteLinkService.php:60

• refreshLinkLabels() calls NotesService::getAll(), which pre-loads tags for all notes. That extra work isn’t needed for a content-only sweep and can add avoidable DB/cache overhead on large note collections during renames.

		foreach ($this->notesService->getAll($userId)['notes'] as $note) {

lib/Controller/NotesController.php:276

• The rename path now triggers a sweep that rewrites other notes’ contents (refreshLinkLabels), but there’s no automated coverage ensuring only matching labels are updated and that custom labels are left untouched. A regression here could silently rewrite user content.

						// only an explicit rename refreshes link labels — autotitle
						// fires while a new note is being typed
						$this->noteLinkService->refreshLinkLabels(
							$this->helper->getUID(),
							$id,
							$oldTitle,
							$note->getTitle(),
						);

lib/Service/NoteLinkService.php:58

• refreshLinkLabels() builds the match/replace using raw titles, but the client-side markdown generator escapes ']' in link labels. As a result, links for notes whose titles contain ']' will not be matched/updated, and a renamed title containing ']' will be written back as invalid markdown (label ends early).

		$pattern = $this->linkPattern($noteId, $oldTitle);
		// ${1} is the target, ${2} any trailing slashes it was written with
		$replacement = '[' . $this->escapeReplacement($newTitle) . '](${1}${2})';
		$changed = 0;