Announcing Obsidian Bases Support (Alpha)

We're excited to announce alpha support for Obsidian Bases in Flowershow! This powerful feature allows you to create dynamic, queryable views of your notes directly in your published sites.

What are Obsidian Bases?

Obsidian Bases let you organize and display your vault's content in multiple ways using filters, formulas, and different view types. Think of them as dynamic databases for your notes that can be embedded anywhere in your content.

Supported Features

Core Sections

• ✅ Filters - Define conditions to narrow down your dataset with and, or, and not logic
• ✅ Formulas - Create computed properties using arithmetic operators and built-in functions
• ✅ Properties - Configure display names for your properties
• ✅ Views - Display your data in multiple layouts (List, Table, and Cards views)

Properties

• ✅ Note Properties - Access frontmatter properties from your Markdown files
• 🚧 File Properties - Limited support for file metadata:
  • file.name, file.path, file.folder, file.ext, file.size
  • file.hasProperty(), file.inFolder()

Operators

• ✅ Arithmetic Operators - +, -, *, /, %, and parentheses
• ✅ Comparison Operators - ==, !=, >, <, >=, <=
• ✅ Boolean Operators - !, &&, ||

Functions

Global Functions

• ✅ escapeHTML() - Escape special characters for HTML
• ✅ date() - Parse date strings
• ✅ html() - Render HTML snippets
• ✅ if() - Conditional logic
• ✅ image() - Display images
• ✅ icon() - Render Lucide icons
• ✅ list() - Create or wrap lists
• ✅ max() / min() - Find extremes
• ✅ now() / today() - Current date/time
• ✅ number() - Type conversion

Type-Specific Functions

• ✅ Any - isTruthy(), toString()
• ✅ Date - All fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, millisecond) and functions (format(), relative(), time(), date(), isEmpty())
• ✅ String - Complete support for all string operations (contains(), lower(), replace(), split(), trim(), etc.)
• ✅ Number - All numeric functions (abs(), ceil(), floor(), round(), toFixed(), isEmpty())
• ✅ List - Full support (map(), filter(), reduce(), sort(), contains(), join(), etc.)
• ✅ Object - isEmpty(), keys(), values()
• ✅ Regular Expression - Pattern matching with matches()

View Types

• ✅ Table View - Display files as rows with property columns

  • ✅ Built-in summaries (Average, Sum, Min, Max, Median, Stddev, Range)
  • ✅ Date summaries (Earliest, Latest, Range)
  • ✅ Checkbox summaries (Checked, Unchecked)
  • ✅ Generic summaries (Empty, Filled, Unique)

• ✅ Cards View - Gallery-like grid layout

  • ✅ Card size configuration
  • ✅ Image properties (local attachments and URLs)
  • ✅ Image fit options (Cover/Contain)
  • ✅ Image aspect ratio control
  • ✅ Use hex color codes as card backgrounds

• ✅ List View - Bulleted or numbered list display

Upcoming Features

The following features are planned for future releases:

Core Functionality

• ❌ Custom Summaries - Define your own summary formulas
• ❌ Date Arithmetic - Add/subtract durations from dates
• ❌ this Context - Access properties of the embedding file

File Properties

• ❌ file.ctime, file.mtime - File creation and modification times
• ❌ file.links, file.embeds, file.tags - File content metadata
• ❌ file.backlinks, file.properties - Advanced file metadata

Functions

• ❌ duration() - Parse duration strings
• ❌ file() - Get file objects from paths
• ❌ link() - Create link objects programmatically
• ❌ File functions: hasLink(), hasTag(), asLink()
• ❌ Link functions: asFile(), linksTo()

View Features

• ❌ Map View - Display files as pins on interactive maps
• ❌ Row Height Control - Customize table row heights

Getting Started

To use Obsidian Bases in your Flowershow site, embed a base configuration using a YAML code block with the base language identifier, e.g.:

```base
filters:
  or:
    - file.hasProperty("status")
    - file.inFolder("Projects")
views:
  - type: table
    name: "All Items"
    order:
      - file.name
      - status
```

Feedback

This is an alpha release, and we're actively working on expanding support. If you encounter any issues or have feature requests, please let us know!

Note: This feature requires Obsidian 1.9+ for full compatibility with the Bases syntax.