Databases

A database is a note whose rows are notes too. Each row has the database’s properties, such as a status or a due date, and a view shows the rows as a table you can sort, filter and group. Nothing is kept anywhere but in your notes’ files, so the database is still there if you open the folder in another app.

Making a database

Run New database from the command palette (Ctrl+P, or Cmd+P on macOS). Nether makes a note named Untitled database in the folder of the note you have open, and opens it: rename it as you rename any note. Below the note’s text is its table, with one column, each row’s name.

• Properties lists the database’s properties: tick one to show its column, or untick it to hide it. Add a property with its name and type: text, a number, a checkbox, a date, a link, a select, a multi-select, a person or a file.
• New row adds a row, a note named Untitled. Click a row’s name to open it, write in it, and rename it.
• Type in a cell to change a row’s value; it is saved when you press Enter or leave the cell, and Escape puts the value back. A value you type in a select becomes one of its options.

Views

A database can have several views, shown as tabs above its table: Add a view adds one. Each view keeps its own settings:

• Sort by clicking a column’s name: once to sort from the lowest value, again to sort from the highest, a third time to stop. A select sorts in the order of its options, as a status goes from to do to done, and rows with no value go last either way.
• Filter keeps the rows that meet its conditions, all of them or any of them: a status that is Done, a number more than five, a date before a day, a name that contains a word, a value that is empty.
• Group by a property shows the rows under each of its values: a select’s options in their order, then the rows with no value.

Boards, lists, galleries, calendars and timelines

Layout shows a view’s rows another way, each with its own filter and sort:

• A board has a column for each value of a select, multi-select, checkbox or person property, chosen under Columns, and a card for each row. Drag a card to another column, or choose its column in its Move to menu, and its value changes; New in a column adds a row with that column’s value. A row with several values of a multi-select shows in each of their columns.

• A list shows each row’s name, with its visible properties beside it.

• A gallery shows each row as a card, with a Cover: the image a file property names, as [[photo.png]] or a web address.

• A calendar shows a month, from Monday, with each row on the day of its Date: a date property, or the day the row was last edited. + on a day adds a row with that date; the arrows and Today move between months.

• A timeline shows six weeks, each row a bar from its Date to its End, another date property, or one day long without one. Earlier and Later move it four weeks.

Rows with no date are listed under a calendar or a timeline. To move a row to another day, change its date in a table or in the row’s properties. Lists and galleries group by a property too.

Assigning work

A person property says who works on a row: a list of names, as owner: [Ana, Ben], or links to people’s notes, as [[Ana]]. As you type in one, Nether offers the names already used in the vault’s person properties.

To see what is assigned to you, choose Settings, then Your name…, and give the name others write for you. The Assigned tab in the sidebar, or View, then Show what is assigned to me, lists every row whose person properties name you, in every database, grouped by database: the soonest date first, with the row’s first select property, as its status, and its first date. Notes outside databases are listed too, under Other notes, when the property is typed person for the whole vault.

Names are matched however they are written: Ana, ana and [[Ana]] are one person. Your name is kept on this device, not in the vault.

Relations

A relation links rows to the rows of another database, or of the same one: projects to their clients, tasks to their projects. Add a property of type Notes, and choose the Database it links to. With Both ways, the other database gets a property that links back, named as you choose; link a project to a client, and the client’s row lists the project.

Type a row’s name in a relation’s cell to link it: the related database’s rows are offered as you type. Each link is a link in the row’s frontmatter, as Obsidian writes them, so a relation reads the same in any Markdown tool:

---
Client:
  - "[[Acme]]"
---

A link that is taken away is taken away at the other end too.

Rollups

A rollup works out a value from the rows a relation links to: a project’s hours from its tasks, a client’s latest invoice date. Add a property of type Rollup, and choose the Relation to roll up, a Property of the related rows, and what to Calculate: count the rows, count their values, their sum, average, lowest or highest number, or their earliest or latest date.

A rollup’s value is worked out each time Nether shows the database, so it follows the related rows as they change; it is never written to a row’s file, and Obsidian’s view of the database leaves it out. Filters, sorts and groups use it as any other value.

Formulas

A formula works out a value from a row’s other values, Price * Count or if(Done, "Yes", "No"): add a property of type Formula and write it, and change it under Properties. Like a rollup, its value is worked out each time the database shows, and never written to a row’s file. The formula language has every operator, function and method.

Exporting a view as CSV

Export CSV in a view’s toolbar saves the view as a CSV file, for a spreadsheet or any tool that reads a table: the rows its filter keeps, in its order, with a column of their names and then the properties the view shows. Choose where to save it; its name is the database’s and the view’s.

• Text, numbers and dates are written as the rows hold them, a checkbox as true or false, and a list’s items between commas.
• A link, as a relation’s value, is written as the name of the note it names.
• Rollups and formulas are written as they work out.

The file is UTF-8, with the byte order mark Excel needs to read every language’s letters. To export every row and property, make a view that shows them all.

How a database is written

A database is a note with a database property in its frontmatter, which holds its properties and its views, and its rows are the notes in the folder beside it with its name. A database named Projects is:

Projects.md          the database: its text, and its schema
Projects/
  Launch site.md     a row, with its values as properties
  Write docs.md

---
database:
  properties:
    - key: Status
      type: select
      options:
        - name: Doing
        - name: Done
    - key: Due
      type: date
  views:
    - name: Table
      layout: table
      visible: [Status, Due]
      sorts:
        - property: Due
          direction: ascending
---

A row’s values are ordinary properties in its frontmatter, Status: Doing, which any Markdown tool reads. Notes in the folders below a row are the row’s own pages, not rows of the database. A view is named by its name, so two views of one database have different names.

In Obsidian

Beside each database Nether keeps an Obsidian base, Projects.base, so Obsidian shows the same rows and views: a table as a table, a board as a kanban, a gallery as cards, a list as a list, and a calendar or a timeline as a table of its dates. Nether writes it from the database whenever the database changes, and moves it when you rename the database.

Change a view in Obsidian, show or hide a column, group it by another property, change its filter, add a view or remove one, and Nether takes the change the next time it shows the database. What only Obsidian has stays in the base as you set it there: a sort, a cover image, a limit, a formula or a map view. A filter that uses Obsidian’s own functions, such as file.hasTag(), stays in the base, and the view keeps its own filter in Nether.

The decision record has the details.