How to persist bookmarks in mini.files

I recently started using Neovim for my text editing needs and that includes setting something up to manage files with. Because I used the NVChad distribution initially I stuck with nvim-tree. But after some searching I came across the mini.files plugin which works wondefully!

The only gripe I had with it is that the bookmarks feature was not persistent across sessions. I was already using the auto-session plugin so I configured it to also restore my bookmarks. Here is my config:

Save this into your init.lua or wherever you setup your mini plugins:

-- Bookmarks autosave
local set_mark = function(id, path)
  MiniFiles.set_bookmark(id, path)
end
vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd('User', {
  pattern = 'MiniFilesExplorerOpen',
  callback = function()
    if MiniFilesBookmarks ~= nil then
      for id, mark in pairs(MiniFilesBookmarks) do
        set_mark(id, mark.path)
      end
    end
  end,
})
local save_marks = function()
  local e = MiniFiles.get_explorer_state()
  E = e
  if e ~= nil then
    MiniFilesBookmarks = e.bookmarks
  end
end
vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd('User', {
  pattern = 'MiniFilesExplorerClose',
  callback = save_marks,
})

And configure your auto-session plugin like this, I am using lazy for my configuration.

{
  'rmagatti/auto-session',
  lazy = false,
  opts = {
    save_extra_cmds = {
      function()
        if MiniFilesBookmarks == nil then
          return
        end
        local t = vim.inspect(MiniFilesBookmarks):gsub('[\n\r]', ' ')
        return 'lua MiniFilesBookmarks=' .. t
      end,
    },
  },
}

Hopefully this quick blog post was helpful to anyone that encounters the same problem!