Thanks for this submission. I use Obsidian but I wasn't aware of this feature.
Obsidian Bases
151–160 of 259 posts
Re: Obsidian Bases
#152I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.
There is so much wankery around Obsidian, it's so cringleworthty. Obsidian is a nice/fancy editor for markdown files. That's all it is really. People have created so many addons to bolt so much stuff onto it, but that's all it is at its core. You can search your notes, you can tag them. Just use the _core_ addons of Obsidian. That's all you need. Then if you find you really are missing something, have a look in the c…
> There is so much wankery around Obsidian, it's so cringleworthty. Obsidian is a nice/fancy editor for markdown files. That's all it is really. People have created so many addons to bolt so much stuff onto it, but that's all it is at its core. You can search your notes, you can tag them.
It is a simple markdown editor yes but it's the addons that make it so different. There's tons and tons of markdown notetaking apps, but this one just hit the right balance for me. End to End encryption, self-hosted livesync (I can see myself typing from another client), good mobile support, fast searching. Self-hosting is a must-have for me, even with end to end encryption.
The one thing I miss is a bit more security on Android (it would be great if the app offered an option to hide its files from other apps by locating them in the app's private storage area). And for it to start quicker, it has to load a whole browser on every open because it's an electron app even on mobile.
But overall it's great for me. Not earth-shattering but it just offers the right combination of features for me.
I don't really see what the 'wankery' is.
> Just use the _core_ addons of Obsidian. That's all you need. Then if you find you really are missing something, have a look in the community addons. You'll probably find what you want.
For me there are several third party addons that are invaluable. The livesync plugin first of all, it's really great sync and fully self-hosted. This is quite a complex thing to get working and one where so many other apps fall down.
ReadItLater for capturing websites is also pretty nice. And the copilot one for searching notes with RAG.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#153Why is this a core plugin? It’s interesting, but seems a bit niche. How do you decide if it’s a core plugin or a regular plugin?
Core plugin is first-party closed-source plugins the Obsidian team created and maintains. Regular (community) plugins are third-party, open-source and vetted only at the submission time.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#154For those curious, this feature is just now publicly launching and before it was only available to people who paid for early access. The Reddit thread has some good discussion about the feature https://old.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1mtxh52/obsidia...
Is there a good AI plugin for Obsidian yet?
While not a plugin, I've had a great experience using the free tier of Gemini CLI over my md-repository. It's rarely run out of context, unlike with code repositories, and it's super easy to feed relevant context just by mentioning files.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#155I don't think they do that good a job of explaining what it is, but the Reddit post linked below included this comment which is helptful: "You know how when you search your notes for something, say a phrase? Well, Bases can basically hold a static search that automatically updates. And, instead of searching all over again, you just click into the Bases file and new notes are just there in the default table format. On…
The first sentence of the documentation already says it: "turn any set of notes into a powerful database". It's really just that, basically. It's a database-view, where the vault is the database and the rows are your files. There is a fancy GUI for creating views, and it seems there is the ability for live-editing data from within the view. Basically a more user-friendly replacement for the very popular dataview-plug…
Yes, but the average Obsidian user may or may not know what a database is an why they should care. As an engineer I like precise language, but we should not forget that multiple audiences require multiple levels of explainations.
Otherwise it is a bit like saying "all monads are functors" when trying to make your reader care for investing time and energy into understanding the concept of monads. The problem there of course is that explaination is circular: without the reader knowing what a monad or a functor is they can't understand the explaination.
A good explaination gives you the technically correct slogan in the beginning (for the advanced readers) and then explains the words and what you can do with such a database and why you should care. Many explainations skip the last step and leave that part as an exercise to the reader.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#156This one-file-one-record approach to databases somehow makes me feel strange.
Notion does the same; every database entry is a separate note/page. As someone working with databases often it “freaked me out”. Over time I’ve learned to accept it…
But notion doesn't work on the file system. And nobody knows what file system on what kind of disk.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#157Thought this could be a full replacement for Dataview but it’s just not there yet.
I love the dataview flexibility and multiple display options.
I’ve moved my Chinese vocab list to Bases (I already had all data in front matter so it was easy) and it’s much much nicer and faster than Dataview
However, for task lists, Dataview still works better imo
Re: Obsidian Bases
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The first sentence of the documentation already says it: "turn any set of notes into a powerful database No, horrible job at explaining. What does it mean to turn any set of notes into a powerful database? What does it mean to "turn"? Does it mean that a file will become a database? Or does it mean that a file can be interpreted as a database? And why set of notes? If I have a single note, can I turn that into a da…
I'd like a demonstration of what's powerful about it. Like, why would I want to take advantage of this, and how? I'm with you here. I don't get it. I can stick data into SQLite and do all kinds of neat stuff. Why am I preferring a mushy database trapped inside Obsidian?
Well everything comes in shades. Lets say you write meetingnprotocols of your meetings down with obsidian. The markdown/freeform and cross-linkable text body of obsidian is perfect for this. But you'd now be able to have a bit richer search over the notes based on who was present. This allows relatively normal people to do that, without having to dive too deep into databases plus it already lives in the app where you take the notes.
As someone who uses Sqlite for a ton of things I don't think the exietence of sqlite makes this useless.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#159This is awesome. It’s exactly what I needed at the right time.
Is it possible to embed `Bases` in existing notes? Or do they always have to be standalone files?
Currently I have lots of files with embedded Dataview queries in files. I’d like to replicate that with this new functionality.
Re: Obsidian Bases
#160This is awesome. It’s exactly what I needed at the right time. Is it possible to embed `Bases` in existing notes? Or do they always have to be standalone files? Currently I have lots of files with embedded Dataview queries in files. I’d like to replicate that with this new functionality.
It is unfortunately not possible to have a Base exist without its own file, even if they can be embedded using the standard `![[]]` syntax.