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Obsidian Bases

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Re: Obsidian Bases

#81

Post by codethief »

raybb wrote: post #55
raybb wrote: post #42

For 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...

On a side note, the docs don't seem to mention if this is possible but does anyone know how to use a template or set a default frontmatter (like created date) when using the "new" button in a Base? The solution I used before bases is eh... pretty hacky. ```meta-bind-js-view {memory^inputText} as title --- const toShow = context.bound.title || "TKTK"; const str = `\`\`\`meta-bind-button label: New Project Idea - ${toS…

FYI On HackerNews you can use indentation (by 2 spaces) to indicate code snippets, not ```.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#82

Post by torium »

slightwinder wrote: post #74
abrookewood wrote: post #62

I 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…

> 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 database too? Are the records of the database files, or items in a file? What is happening when I type ![[Untitled.base]]? Is the file where I typed that a database now? Or does that text assume that the file named Untitled must be a database?

They do a horrible job at explaining it.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#83

Post by segphault »

andyferris wrote: post #47
kepano wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rows are individual Markdown files and the columns are YAML frontmatter properties in those files. There are some special properties prefixed by `file.` which are implicit to the file itself, e.g.`file.name` refers to the file name, and `file.ext` is the extension. The base views are defined as YAML in .base files or can be embedded in code blocks within a Markdown file. You can also export the rendered views to…

Hmm... so I can't use this to render and filter a table with 10k rows without having 10k markdown files? If I understand correctly, the intention seems to be "curated list of links" which the user can sort, filter, etc when viewing. I guess that's cool, if you use Obsidian lots and have many notes/links - but when I clicked the article and saw the table I was hoping for a "dataframe" plugin for .md (much like how mer…

Yes, it relies on a Markdown note file for each row and the “columns” are YAML frontmatter and cached metadata for each file.

I am with you on this, I wish Obsidian would optionally allow you to use YAML or some other structured data directly in the fenced code block or base file.

I really, really want something that kind of takes an Obsidian-like approach to local databases, sort of like Excel/Airtable but with flat, human-editable text files that live on your filesystem with a schema driven property editor. It’s kind of a bummer that this gets so tantalizingly close but doesn’t take it to the logical conclusion. I hope they do it eventually or make it possible with plugins.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#84

Post by mynegation »

HSO wrote: post #54
echelon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is beyond slick. I'm finally able to kill Notion (good riddance - I never liked it!), and if it can handle larger tables then I'll stop using Google Suite as well. My last request of the Obsidian team is a better git plugin. Their official built-in sync product is fine, but I'd still like to manage my own versioning so I can use automations. The currently available git plugin is extremely dangerous (!!!) if set…

Speaking as a superficial git user, can you say why not simply git init on the vault is enough to use it? Why is a plugin necessary?

Plugin commits and pushes the contents of the notes as they are being updated - from within the Obsidian app.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#85

Post by andyferris »

segphault wrote: post #83
andyferris wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... so I can't use this to render and filter a table with 10k rows without having 10k markdown files? If I understand correctly, the intention seems to be "curated list of links" which the user can sort, filter, etc when viewing. I guess that's cool, if you use Obsidian lots and have many notes/links - but when I clicked the article and saw the table I was hoping for a "dataframe" plugin for .md (much like how mer…

Yes, it relies on a Markdown note file for each row and the “columns” are YAML frontmatter and cached metadata for each file. I am with you on this, I wish Obsidian would optionally allow you to use YAML or some other structured data directly in the fenced code block or base file. I really, really want something that kind of takes an Obsidian-like approach to local databases, sort of like Excel/Airtable but with flat…

Yes exactly. In fact, I'd prefer it by built more like mermaid as a _markdown_ JavaScript plugin thing that supports different data formats (not just YAML frontmatter - bare CSV for example) and have it available outside Obsidian (the github .md renderer, VS Code Markdown Preview, etc).

Re: Obsidian Bases

#87

Post by kepano »

raybb wrote: post #55
raybb wrote: post #42

For 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...

On a side note, the docs don't seem to mention if this is possible but does anyone know how to use a template or set a default frontmatter (like created date) when using the "new" button in a Base? The solution I used before bases is eh... pretty hacky. ```meta-bind-js-view {memory^inputText} as title --- const toShow = context.bound.title || "TKTK"; const str = `\`\`\`meta-bind-button label: New Project Idea - ${toS…

Default template will be added in an upcoming version.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#88

Post by obsidianbases1 »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #29
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on when the git plugin is dangerous?

I've never had it wipe anything before[1], but I do have a stretch of 200+ commits in my personal vault where my laptop and desktop were fighting back and forth on the contents of one setting file. One caveat is that the obsidian android app DOES NOT seem to save files to storage until the note unloads, which can break things if you pull in the middle of making changes. [1] Though I have had to fix my termux clone of…

For better/worse, I've noticed save seems to be triggered when moving to a new line. Plenty of times I've unloaded (swiped away the app) only to have a missing last line later when I get on desktop. Building a habit of adding a few trailing newlines seems to have mostly resolved this for me

Re: Obsidian Bases

#89

Post by jcutrell »

wjrb wrote: post #4

Wow, I remember when this feature was planned/announced. It's great to see first class support for the Dataview-type workflows. I hope the API has support to allow extensions---I see that it is on the Roadmap[0]. I'm particularly interested to see how this integrates with Canvas and other note types. [0]: https://obsidian.md/roadmap/

I am curious about how this compares to dataview. As a dataview user, I'm not immediately seeing something bases does that dataview doesn't, but I am not a power user.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#90

Post by obsidianbases1 »

HSO wrote: post #54
echelon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is beyond slick. I'm finally able to kill Notion (good riddance - I never liked it!), and if it can handle larger tables then I'll stop using Google Suite as well. My last request of the Obsidian team is a better git plugin. Their official built-in sync product is fine, but I'd still like to manage my own versioning so I can use automations. The currently available git plugin is extremely dangerous (!!!) if set…

Speaking as a superficial git user, can you say why not simply git init on the vault is enough to use it? Why is a plugin necessary?

I prefer not using git the plugin, but still commit to a repo.

Sometimes you'll have to push a big ugly commit.

But other times the manual diff review can save you from a headache, like if you have some obscure syncing going on, like syncing READMEs and other markdown files to external repos to manage all markdown with the same Obsidian interface.

Also if you need to maintain a high-standard for the contents of your notes while still utilizing AI tools, the manual diff review can prove invaluable in ensuring trusted resources don't turn into slop

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