The new bases feature allows us to create lots of different bases, even bases of bases. This leads to a lot of individual base files, most likely scattered around the vault.
In order to filter or group them logically - right now we can only utilize file.properties and directories.
This limits the way i can filter all those bases - while Obsidian already has the yaml format inbuild (as properties / frontmatter) and utilizes it in bases.
Proposed solution
As bases has a very simple syntax and is parsed by Obsidian, i would request to allow to add a yaml block at the front, similar to how markdown files are handled.
This would be a rather easy fix i think, as the parser itself for yaml is already there and pretty robust.
Current workaround (optional)
Currently its only really possible to use name encoding (like a strict syntax for the file names) to achieve some more flexability, but its not even slightly comparable.
We can make use of directories in order to achieve some grouping, but its very strict and doesnt allow for any kind of more complex relationships.
I noticed that bases show up in a new and unconfigured Base. Seeing that, it occurred to me that I should be able to add properties to Bases in the same way I do the rest of my files. Enabling me to have a Base of Bases. This, however, there are no options in Obsidian to do this in the UI.
Being the enterprising nerd that I am, I hopefully tried adding frontmatter to the raw .base with VSCode. But, alas, this resulted in a YAML parsing error—which makes total sense.
You can do some basic filtering of Bases with a Metabase but it only seems to work with the file properties (path, extension, timestamps, that sorta thing). Which is fairly limiting.
Proposed solution
It’d be amazing if one could add properties to Bases the same way they do the rest of their content. It wouldn’t have to be frontmatter, although is an obvious choice. Once I can query bases, this opens up a lot of innovation. And, it seems like a pretty easy add—although there might be a circular reference problem buried in here that I’m not seeing.
As a workaround you can embed bases to notes (see below) which can then feature yaml frontmatter. Obviously this is cumbersome but we could extend this need for every file type like pdf or mp4 (not just bases). It would be extremely useful to have universal (custom) properties regardless of actual file type. File browsers like Finder might offer a solution (universally for every items) and Lightroom Classic offers photo/video files management.
