blacksmithgu

obsidian-dataview

TypeScript2021–2025

blacksmithgu / obsidian-dataview

obsidian-dataview

A data index and query language over Markdown files, for https://obsidian.md/.

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18Distinct people

19Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

9.4KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A data index and query language over Markdown files, for https://obsidian.md/.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

silentvoid13/templater · linked in 3 of the same discussions
chhoumann/quickadd · linked in 2 of the same discussions
vinzent03/obsidian-git · linked in 2 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:03:30 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year19 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-07-12 07:09:41 UTC to 2025-08-20 18:08:49 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	8	1	7
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	4	0	4
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	0	3
2025	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2

What Hacker News says

4 sources

PurpleRamen·Dec 22, 2023

> Joplin is using md to. The way it's handled can make the difference in control. > by separating that in their DB, it's a big NO for me since it's a closed silo. Joplin is using a popular open database with a healthy community and good tooling. It's as open as markdown. Maybe not for you, when you lack the knowledge, but markdown is similar closed for anyone not understanding filesystems and editors. > This: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview works so wonderful for me Good for you, but that is very low level in terms of data-handling. Dataview is really just an elaborated search, there is no good level of interaction. Datacore, the next project of the Dataview is supposed to bring this, but it's not even usable yet AFAIK. Coincidental, the Obsidian-devs are also working on that front, but nothing is finished yet. > https:/

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/github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git and b) easy to fix since it's a text file. Gosh! That's useless when the app itself is not working. And even worse if you are not realizing the errors early. > Aha. I don't think so. Which authority says that? My own experience. I've tested enough plugins over the years to know their dark corners. > And even if It's like that, my markdown files would survive everything The thing is, technically you are not even having proper markdown, but a fork with some extensions of Obsidian. So some features of your parts might break when switching away from Obsidian. And the reason for all this is also because markdown is lacking definitions for what obsidian-people are doing with it. Coincidentally, this seems also one of the reasons why Joplin is using a database. > And gosh, this is a good thing! Not if they all suck. > Installing multiple task plugins shows that something is "broke" on the user side. Sure, because the plugins are lacking features, its the users fault... Maybe some users have just very different levels of requirements from you.

In A structured note-taking app for personal use

Ringz·Dec 22, 2023

> Not really. Obsidian has its shares of problems too, and most of them originate from using Markdown. Aha. Which problems do you mean? > Markdown is a freeform text-format, and works very well for writing text, but it really sucks for data and structured content. Joplin is using md to. And if Joplin does a good job on "data" and "structured content" (whatever you mean by that) by separating that in their DB, it's a big NO for me since it's a closed silo. This: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview works so wonderful for me, and it never breaks anything in my simple md files. > Most plugins and features in that area are very brittle and overspecialized, working only well enough in their specific use case. Aha. I don't think so. Which authority says that? And even if It's like that, my markdown files would survive everything, s

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ince they are a) in git. https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git and b) easy to fix since it's a text file. Gosh! > And gosh, Obsidian has really a huge amount of plugins for data-handling. And gosh, this is a good thing! > At some point, it was so bad that there were multiple competing task-plugins which broke each other just because they had different formatting for dates. Installing multiple task plugins shows that something is "broke" on the user side. It's not the fault of Markdown or Obsidian. Just have a look on: https://github.com/ivan-lednev/obsidian-day-planner but you dont need a fancy task plugin like this, if you know your way around https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview or https://github.com/obsidian-tasks-group/obsidian-tasks Since the Ecosystem around Obsidian and pure Markdown, most of the time I stay in my browser https://github.com/deathau/markdownload and nvim https://github.com/epwalsh/obsidian.nvim

In A structured note-taking app for personal use

probablynish·Jun 16, 2023

Have you heard of Obsidian? It's a note-taking app build on locally stored markdown files with bidirectional linking and a great ecosystem of third party plugins. One of the most popular plugins is https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview which lets you treat your notes as databases and query them to form tables. The creator has been working on its successor, Datacore https://github.com/blacksmithgu/datacore for a while - Datacore might come close to what you're looking for, its goals include WYSIWYG views and live editing inside tables.

In Show HN: I made an open-source Notion-style WYSYWIG editor

protortyp·Apr 25, 2023

I primarily use folders and the dataview plugin [1] for 1). E.g. when I am managing a course, I have a structure like so: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5mbcuu2pyy7eb3o/folder-structure.p... I usually have a top-level note for a course, here the "Computational Surgineering.md". In there, I use the dataview plugin to simply create a dynamic table of all entries in the meetings subfolder: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wk8jjldlohg6bf3/dataview.png?dl=0 Another option I use is nested tags[2], like #cs/meeting for the above use-case. As for 2) I don't really use the global graph that much. It looks quite cool, but I primarily just look at a local graph with a maximum depth of 2-3 to quickly hop around. [1] https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview [2] https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Tags Edit: Formatting is horrible on HN. I pos

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ted screenshots instead.

In People who use Notion to plan their whole lives