Use case or problem
Hi. I had encountered similar idea as mine in archived thread (/t/add-time-as-a-property-type/77699) in which the OP was trying to achieve time measurement/tracking.
With the emergent of ‘bases’, I think this would be a great feature as to filter a certain time duration and at a point of time. For instance, a user wanted to find possible events within a certain time duration, independent from ‘date’ type. The chosen solution achieved this by using ‘text’ type and uses inline calculation method with ‘Dataview’ plugin to calculate the duration, but this is not what I intended to raise. But rather, for ‘file’ and ‘bases’ to have a property type that enable to set and ‘filter’ a time duration, like a time-block (for instance, ‘from 11:30 PM to 1:30 AM’ or even ‘at 11:30 PM’).
Like a routine, an event is done repeatedly where date is unnecessary. For instance, skin care involving acidic product must be done every 2 days in a week in the morning. Without focusing on what day it is, (since this can be achieved using ‘text’ type in both ‘file’ and ‘bases’) the skin care is done at a certain time in the morning. Thus, the user can know that at a certain time in the morning, skin care routine must be done. By using filter in ‘bases’, to my understanding, this cannot be achieved simply through ‘datetime’ type without having to create multiple files of different date of same exact time. The same goes for medication intake, where a user need to track at what time of what medication must be taken.
Proposed solution
It would be a great feature that in ‘bases’, there’s a ‘filter’ to track down of a certain time duration and of at a point in time, regardless of the date, while in ‘file’, a property type ‘Time’ that enables to fill in a point of time ‘HH:mm:ss’ (and later enables implementation of ‘from X to Y’) so that ‘filter’ in ‘bases’ can use the ‘Time’ type to calculate a time window, where using ‘text’ type isn’t possible.
There are three ways I could think of implementing this feature. First is to have ‘Time duration’ type where it is possible to insert ‘from X to Y’ where X and Y is the time ‘HH:mm:ss’. This allows for multiple time duration for a single file. The caveat is that it is not possible to have a point of time (as in at 4:00 PM). Second is to have ‘Time’ type to insert ‘at HH:mm:ss’. This allows for singular time duration for a single file (without creating multiple ‘Time’ type instances). Lastly is to have ‘Time’ type ‘from HH:mm:ss to HH:mm:ss’ where ‘from’ is required and ‘to’ is mandatory. This implementation combines both first and second’s benefits. The only caveat that I could think of is it may be confusing for early user if not mentioned about the mandatory field.
Without redundant amount of files created only to have separate date of same time (or repeating text in a file of time if implement JS), better files filtering can be achieved and easier to calculate time duration besides enabling time-blocking method.
Just like in Google Calendar where you can set at what specific time from and to a certain date, by having this feature to be implemented, similar function can be achieved with file properties in just a single file without having to create multiple instances.
