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I use Obsidian a decent amount daily but I'm confused by what properties are. Are they like tags?

kepano 3y ago
Properties are a UI for YAML frontmatter, with nice autocomplete and search syntax. Allows you to add structured metadata to your notes, e.g. dates, numbers, text, checkboxes, as well as links to other notes. It's compatible with other tools that use frontmatter, such as SSGs (Jekyll, Hugo, Eleventy, Astro, etc). https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Properties https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Properties
input_sh 3y ago
In programming terms they're variables you add to the top of a note. Or if you ever used a static site generator, they're the same as YAML metadata. In fact, they are YAML metadata with a prettier interface. You can't really do anything useful with them within Obsidian without some plugins (like Dataview) just yet, but dynamic databases are on the roadmap. So, eventually you'll be able to query, filter, sort notes without a third-party plugin, get the results as a table, and insert that table into some of your notes. Think "every book note whose author = John Doe, sorted by release date", "every note that contains #tag1 and #tag2, but not #tag3", things like that. And the result will be auto-updated whenever you change some metadata.
- bad_username 3y ago
  > In programming terms they're variables you add to the top of a note If you have the dataview plugin installed, you can also define properties in the note itself, using the `property:: value` syntax.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Properties are not really new, it's just a more dedicated name for frontmatter, which already exists since the beginning, and where tags are saved. But it also comes with a nice interface and integrated support for fields outside of tags, which until now was an area where you were depending on plugins like dataview. It seems on the long run, they plan to shift Obsidian more into the direction of Notion Databases, and delivering an improved version of dataview out-of-the-box.

Properties are a UI for YAML frontmatter, with nice autocomplete and search syntax. Allows you to add structured metadata to your notes, e.g. dates, numbers, text, checkboxes, as well as links to other notes. It's compatible with other tools that use frontmatter, such as SSGs (Jekyll, Hugo, Eleventy, Astro, etc). https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Properties https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Properties

input_sh 3y ago

In programming terms they're variables you add to the top of a note. Or if you ever used a static site generator, they're the same as YAML metadata. In fact, they are YAML metadata with a prettier interface. You can't really do anything useful with them within Obsidian without some plugins (like Dataview) just yet, but dynamic databases are on the roadmap. So, eventually you'll be able to query, filter, sort notes without a third-party plugin, get the results as a table, and insert that table into some of your notes. Think "every book note whose author = John Doe, sorted by release date", "every note that contains #tag1 and #tag2, but not #tag3", things like that. And the result will be auto-updated whenever you change some metadata.

bad_username 3y ago
> In programming terms they're variables you add to the top of a note If you have the dataview plugin installed, you can also define properties in the note itself, using the `property:: value` syntax.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

Properties are not really new, it's just a more dedicated name for frontmatter, which already exists since the beginning, and where tags are saved. But it also comes with a nice interface and integrated support for fields outside of tags, which until now was an area where you were depending on plugins like dataview. It seems on the long run, they plan to shift Obsidian more into the direction of Notion Databases, and delivering an improved version of dataview out-of-the-box.