Importing/adopting UUIDs for non-email files

DEVONthink
1

I have one or more Markdown files that are automatically imported into DEVONthink when they are created outside DEVONthink, using rules to file them into the correct database.

If the Markdown front matter included a UUID, could that UUID be adopted as DEVONthink’s own item UUID?

The Markdown files are generated from rows in a simple SQLite database. If I can assign the UUID at the time the row and Markdown file are created, I could store a link to the DEVONthink record in the database simply by prepending x-DEVONthink-item:// to that UUID.

DEVONthink appears to do something like this by default for imported email messages. Is there any way to implement similar behavior for Markdown files (or any other text based file formats), assuming they contain a correctly formatted UUID in a front matter key-value pair?

Many thanks in advance. This is something that could potentially also help for using Devonthink as a secure object storage solution for another database if it could be applied to other file formats.

2

No, this is not possible. UUIDs are generated and managed by DEVONthink.

In the Pro or Server edition, you can create your own custom metadata to store your own values but they will not supersede a document’s item link.

3

Is it still the case that for email the UUID comes from the mail app, or is that another identifier?

4

Emails do have a UUID derived from the email message. Other file types do not.

5

Every email already has an uuid, and that one is truely unique because it was generated by the first receiving SMTP server.
Technically, it will be difficult to generate an UUID outside DT that is valid inside. If not impossible.

6

Why do you say this?

Even in a very large database, the odds of a random UUID matching an existing one are vanishingly small - lower than the risk of hardware failures that we routinely accept.

7

Many thanks for the inputs. I’m looking into periodically mapping the DT links against custom metadata to achieve the same ends.