# Vim Tip: Paste Markdown Link with Automatic Title Fetching


I've been writing more posts that contain [links](/tags#links) recently, and so
it's common for me to copy/paste links into the Markdown source for a post.
Often times, this means copy/pasting the URL and link title separately. Surely,
this can be automated!

VSCode has a
[great plugin](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kukushi.pasteurl)
for this, but I haven't found something comparable for vim. Sounds like it's
time to break out vimscript:

```vim
function GetURLTitle(url)
    " Bail early if the url obviously isn't a URL.
    if a:url !~ '^https\?://'
        return ""
    endif

    " Use Python/BeautifulSoup to get link's page title.
    let title = system("python3 -c \"import bs4, requests; print(bs4.BeautifulSoup(requests.get('" . a:url . "').content, 'lxml').title.text.strip())\"")

    " Echo the error if getting title failed.
    if v:shell_error != 0
        echom title
        return ""
    endif

    " Strip trailing newline
    return substitute(title, '\n', '', 'g')
endfunction

function PasteMDLink()
    let url = getreg("+")
    let title = GetURLTitle(url)
    let mdLink = printf("[%s](%s)", title, url)
    execute "normal! a" . mdLink . "\<Esc>"
endfunction

" Make a keybinding (mnemonic: "mark down paste")
nmap <Leader>mdp :call PasteMDLink()<cr>
```

The above code snippet is in 3 parts:

1. `GetURLTitle()` uses python and
   [Beautiful Soup](https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/doc) to get
   the HTML title of the URL provided as an argument. This requires that python
   and BeautifulSoup be installed, but these are fairly common packages.
2. `PasteMDLink()` gets the contents of the `+` register (which contains the
   system clipboard), uses `GetURLTitle()` to get the title of the URL contained
   in the clipboard, and formats it as a markdown link. Then, it appends that
   formatted link after the current cursor position.
3. `nmap` sets up a keybinding in normal mode to activate the script.

So, my workflow for importing a link into a markdown draft is to (1) copy it to
the system clipboard and (2) type `,mdp`. Vim grabs the link's title and formats
it correctly. Automation complete. 😄

---

As a disclaimer, I'm a total novice at vimscript. Please let me know if there's
a better way of accomplishing the same task!