[bug/FR] Option to sanitize episode name/strip special characters

[danieltomasz]

I wanted to add my metadata into yaml, metadata with special character is broking yaml/dataview doesnt find the note

For example for the podcast "New Books in Higher Education" episode titled
Barbara W. Sarnecka, "The Writing Workshop: Write More, Write Better, Be Happier in Academia (2019)" is breaking yaml because of quotes.

Maybe this was requested but I cannot find the solution now.

it could be done via separate template like {{sanitized_title}}

[Djyp]

Isn't {{safeTitle}} there for this reason ? Or maybe it needs to be updated

[chhoumann]

Thanks for the report, and thanks @Djyp for pointing at {{safeTitle}}.

This is handled on current master, in two complementary ways:

1. {{safeTitle}} (note templates) and {{title}} / {{podcast}} (file-path and download templates) run through a sanitizer that strips every character that breaks file names or YAML, including the quotes, colons and commas from your example. Stripped characters: \ , # % & / { } * < > $ ' " : @ ‣ | ?, plus control characters, with whitespace collapsed and leading/trailing dots removed. So if you want the title inside frontmatter, use {{safeTitle}} and it stays valid (the ? and other OS-illegal characters are now covered too).

2. The default episode note template was reworked to be Obsidian Bases / Dataview friendly: YAML-hostile values (the raw {{title}}, which can carry quotes and colons, and {{url}}, which for a local file is a wikilink that may contain a quote) now live in the note body, while only guaranteed-safe values go in the frontmatter. A fresh install never produces broken YAML even for nasty titles.

I verified this in a real Obsidian vault using your exact example title Barbara W. Sarnecka, "The Writing Workshop: ..." (with an added / and ? for good measure):

• The note was created at PodNotes/New Books in Higher Education/Barbara W. Sarnecka The Writing Workshop WriteMore (2019).md. The , " : / ? were all stripped from the file name.
• Obsidian's metadata cache parsed the frontmatter into a valid object (type, podcast, date, tags, status, rating, favorite), confirming the YAML is well-formed. The raw title with quotes and colons lives only in the body heading, where YAML rules do not apply.

Closing as resolved. If you find a specific character that still slips through into a file name or frontmatter, please reopen with the title and we will add it. The available tags (including {{safeTitle}}) are listed in the Templates documentation.