Warning

🚧 UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧

This plugin is almost ready for beta release... but not yet. I am currently doing some integration testing and it should be stable for others to use, but I wouldn't reccomend it as of right now.

Better Properties

Adds additional property types and configuration options to Obsidian's core Properties View plugin!

Warning

DISCLAIMER

This property aims to extend and seamlessly integrate into the existing metadata properties core-feature.

In order to be so closely integrated with core features, this plugin makes heavy use of the undocumented Obsidian API and uses a few monkey-patches around existing app functions.

Because of the above, this plugin is prone to unforeseen, breaking changes on new updates to the Obsidian application.

If you use this plugin, I would recommend you turn off automatic updates for Obsidian or be prepared to open bug reports and/or wait for fixes when Obsidian updates release.

Table of contents

• Better Properties
  • Table of contents
  • Features
    • Additional property types
    • Additional frontmatter property editor functionaly
    • Additional property features
    • Wrapper for dataview EARLY ALPHA
      • Why IDs instead of storing config in markown?
    • In-note property editing EARLY ALPHA
  • Contributing
• Old
  • Features
    • General
    • Additional property types
  • Roadmap
    • Custom type widgets
    • Property icon menu
    • Misc

Features

Additional property types

Numerous property types are added to Obsidian!

Warning

Changes to built-in types

Better Properties heavily prefers to create new types as opposed to modifying existing types that Obsidian has built in. Therefore, requests to add/change functionality to built-in types will likely not be completed.

Type	Summary
Button	Perform an action on clicking the button
Color	A color input using native HTML functionality
Dropdown	A select input to choose from a set of options
Group	An object of additional sub-properties
Markdown	Live-preview enabled markdown editor
Number+	A number input with added action buttons
Progress	A progress bar from 0% - 100%
Relation	Display a property from another note that is updated bi-directionally
Slider	A slider input with customizable limits
Stars	A number of stars that act like a rating input
Time	A time input (no date)
Toggle	A toggle input that acts the same as a checkbox

Additional frontmatter property editor functionaly

Added functionaly has been added to the property editor for notes.

Feature	Summary
Hidden properties	Set properties as "hidden", which will hide them by default when opening a note until "show hidden" is clicked.
Sort properties	Reorder properties based on name, type, or a UPCOMING template
Synchronize properties	Sync properties between a template note and notes that correlate with it.

Additional property features

asdf

Wrapper for dataview EARLY ALPHA

Dataview tables become enabled with editing functionality for each property with our wrapper.

[!NOTE] But Datacore...? This wrapper has a different goal than Datacore. To put it simply, this wrapper just renders the property widgets that are normally used in the frontmatter property editor... plus some other things like pagination and other basic table-editing features.

Simply change your block language to datavie-bp then press space and type and ID like the following:

```dataview-bp SOME-ID
TABLE col1, col2
FROM #tag
```

Warning

Dataview gotchas

• Only TABLE queries are allowed
• GROUP BY is not allowed
• Inline properties are not supported
• Use the tags property to properly update note tags (not file.tags or file.etags)

Why IDs instead of storing config in markown?

An ID for each dataview-bp is needed to associate a block with stored configuration like whether to show property type icons.

I have previously experimented with storing this configuration as YAML inside the codeblock markdown, but have decided instead to use an ID system for the following reasons:

• Updates to the source text of a codeblock will always cause a re-render which can cause unnecessary re-renders which complicates certain features
• Makes blocks incompatible with Dataview syntax
• Can't share configuration between blocks in different places
• More prone to accidental (breaking) changes by users/other pugins/etc.

However, this approach does have some cons

• Less portable for users to copy and paste elsewhere
• Unused ID cofigs may take up disk space
  • UPCOMING You can automatically check for unused IDs in the plugin settings and choose to delete them.

In-note property editing EARLY ALPHA

Contributing

Please open [open an issue] to request new ones or feature requests to existing types. If your request has already been opened, please give it a thumbs up to show your support for it.

If you'd like to contribute to a bug fix or feature request, please feel free to submit a PR.

---

Old

Features

General

• Custom icon by property name
• Custom icon and text colors
• Mass update properties
• Delete properties from all notes
• Specify default hidden properties
  • These will be hidden until the "Show hidden" button is clicked

Additional property types

• Dropdown
  • Customizable options values and labels
• Toggle
• Color
• Slider
  • can set min, max, step, and if limits should be displayed
• Button
  • run inline JavaScript, a JavaScript file, or a command. (more options TBD)
• Markdown (live preview)
  • Obsidian only considers links here as "real" links (those that show in graph view, etc.) if the link is the only thing in the value.
• Number+
  • can set a min, max, and update via an expression
• Stars
  • can set custom star icon and count

Roadmap

Custom type widgets

• Dropdown
• Slider
• Toggle
• Color
• Number+
• Markdown
• Stars
• Button
• JS
  • Essentially a "custom" type. Executes arbitrary JS that receives the normal arguments provided to type widget render functions, allowing users to make a practically custom type widget
• Progress
  • May or may not do this. Most people probably would want JS to update this dynamically which is better suited for the JS type
• Date range
• Group (nested object)
• Cycle
• Time
• ...more?? (open an issue for a FR with suggestions!)

Property icon menu

Additional options shown when clickong in the icon next to the property key

• delete property from all notes
• mass update property
• rename property
• configure property settings
• Show and link to notes that have this property
• change icon for property
• ...more?

Misc

• zod for validation
• translation (i18Next) support
  • Replace all hardcoded strings
  • Make guide for contributing translations and what are currently added/reviewed
• sync with template
  • Customizable template-id property name
  • Customiable template proeprty name
  • Sync properties option in more options button menu
  • Option to show warning
  • Option to delete extra properties
• set groups for property names
  • tried this by patching the metdataEditor prototype, but I could only move the rendered property after it was rendered, which causes an ugly flash of it being moved, plus some weird duplication I couldn't figure out.
• nested properties
  • a way to do 'grouped' properties that are just objects in YAML. Dataview already supports these, so I could use them to create a copy of the metdataEditor for each nested property 'group'.
• render property within regular and inline codeblocks
  • First implementation ready, need to review and refine
    • Need to replace hard coded strings with i18next
    • Doesn't render in table cells. For reference, it looks like dataview has this issue but meta-bind doesn't.
      • Fixed. However, when you click the cell obsidian switches the cell from reading to live-preview and places the cursor in the code text and unrenders the widget. Don't know a solution yet. Meta-bind has the same problem.
  • allow render of individual property editors that can update the current note or other notes.
  • inline code something like &=propertyName: <string>, fileName: <string | undefined>, cssClass: <string | undefined>
  • Codeblock something like

    • propertyName: <string>
      filePath: <string | undefined> (defaults to current note)
      cssClass: <string | undefined>