Org-roam-capture function behaves differently when called
interactively, and from org-metareturn-hook. Why?
reddit / emacs

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Jack-o-tall-tales · 2022-08-24 19:25

I've got the following function:

    (defun my/org-roam-capture-to-link ()
        "In org-roam files, capture to node linked at point."
        (interactive)
        (when-let ((_ (org-roam-file-p)) ;; Only act in org-roam files
                   (link-start (car (org-in-regexp org-link-bracket-re
1)))
                   (link (save-excursion
                           (goto-char link-start)
                           (org-element-link-parser)))
                   (id (plist-get (cadr link) :path))
                   ;; This will fail if there is no node
                   (node (org-roam-node-from-id id)))
          ;; If there /is/ a node, capture to it.
          (org-roam-capture- :node node)))

This should capture to the org-roam node at the id linked at point,
but only if point is at a link to such a node, and I'm in an org-roam
file's buffer.

Normally when I just run `org-roam-capture` and select an already
existing node, *no* new text is added, and I just add whatever I need
to and press `C-c C-c`.

Now, If I'm on a link to an org-roam node, and run `my/org-roam-
capture-to-link` interactively with `M-x`, it does exactly that:
nothing new is added, exactly what I want.

But I wanted to run it from `org-metareturn`. I added the symbol for
the function to `org-metareturn-hook`. Now if I press `M-RET` on an
appropriate link, I *do* get an org-roam capture, but it adds an empty
heading on a newline (that is, it adds "\\n* |", with the cursor at
|).

What's going on? How can I make the meta-return version work like the
M-x version?

Thanks!

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organic-bookworm · 2022-08-25 14:09

The [`org-meta-return`](https://github.com/emacs-straight/org-mode/blo
b/00adad9357b9123a7b11ecf12c148a5196debcb7/lisp/org.el#L17643-L17654)
does `(run-hook-with-args-until-success 'org-metareturn-hook)`. Thus,
the reason is `my/org-roam-capture-to-link` function probably returns
`nil`, so `org-insert-heading` happens.

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Jack-o-tall-tales · 2022-08-25 14:31

Thanks, this sounds likely!!

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Jack-o-tall-tales · 2022-08-25 16:50

Just checked, and yes, this was it. Thanks again!