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 a Markdown table or CSV.

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andyferris 3 days ago | parent [-]

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 mermaid works, defined in a codeblock) that references a nearby CSV/JSON/etc file.

I often have a lot of .md files floating around "data" projects and a lightweight tabular renderer (with filtering, sorting, possibly editing) would be absolutely killer. Does such a thing exist already?

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aetherspawn 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

If you have 10k rows this isn’t for you, but 99% of use cases have less than 100 rows.

For example, book list, movie list, customer list, invoice list, asset register, key register… once you hit a certain point, obsidian probably isn’t the right tool anymore. But no reason to go to the monthly SaaS “right tool” at the POC stage.

Obsidian is the pre-step for a larger database: cheap, fast to customise, easy to backup (git), self supported. It’s probably not going to run a company, but it will suit an individual or small startup.

And 99.99% of discussions about scaling are premature optimisation (cit needed). A lot of people spend more time thinking about scaling then entering their data, which probably means the data is smaller than they think! ha

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segphault 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	jordwest 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I guess there is a convergence of ideas going on here because I've actually been tinkering on something like this, a Notion-database-like that just uses flat CSV files (and internally reads it into an in-memory SQLite for filtering, grouping and displaying) then schema files for interpreting the data and displaying it nicely. Here's a little demo of what I've got working: https://youtu.be/LCR9pAc_xn0. It's currently still very rough and I'm just using it myself but hoping to open source it at some point.
	▲	andyferris 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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).

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jskherman 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think what you're trying to describe is a Jupyter notebook but in a slimmer package. Maybe marimo or quarto? Maybe there are already notebook viewers out there (on GitHub?) that only allow view or edit without code execution, if that suits your needs.

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wjrb 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you ever tried the Dataview plugin?

It allows inline blocks in the `key:: value` format, as well as frontmatter-based data (sort of what Bases are doing) and probably even more.