Recording creation and revision dates in the metadata for a note

[PaulWatts]

One of the many nice things about Bear is the metadata that it automatically records for a note and makes available for easy viewing.

Please see the attached screenshot.

I find this very useful and was wondering if this is something that would be considered as a feature request for Obsidian.

[ryanjamurphy]

I imagine your OS saves created dates and last modified dates anyway, so really this is just the ability to see that metadata in Obsidian, yes?

[laker]

I think it a little cool. but I can’t say if it is useful.

[laker]

maybe I will want it.

[PaulWatts]

@ryanjamurphy

I forgot the OS was doing that

It would make it more convenient to see it in Obsidian but if really need then yes, could observe the dates in the file system.

[c099]

One problem is the file creation date does not necessarily equal to the note creation date.
Bear stores it in a SQLite database, instead of using the file modification date.

I’d suggest storing the date in the YAML front matter, similar to that in Jekyll.

[pluralog]

That would be a great little plugin. Just to show the file metadata at some place like the word count plugin.

[alehandrof]

Here’s my workaround:

How to capture note creation metadata

I discovered that if YAML front matters was not processed. So, if I did something like this: --- created: 2019-05-21 tags: #wonderful --- Then #wonderful would not be picked up as a tag. So, instead, I’ve created a template (using the core plugin) that generates a line like this at the top of the document: ️ 2020-11-12 This allows me to add tags beside the date and seems workable for the moment. I don’t really use emoji in my notes, so hopefully I’ll be to use regular expressions to revis…

Ideally, it would be nice to have “created” and “changed” values built into Obsidian as front matter.

[midas0441]

created as YAML has pro’s and con’s.
Pro: When importing a note created from elsewhere, one could easily maintain the original creation date.
Con: created could accidentally be changed or lost. This wouldn’t be a catastrophic error for the app, since the app could always default to the file’s creation date for created; but, it could be an issue for a user who wants to somehow protect created value.

Are there write-protected YAML, which could be altered only after a warning/alert? I imagine not.

[jarbochov]

I am slowly moving over from Evernote to Obsidian. Contextual metadata is important to me so: Created, Modified viewable, searchable, etc is useful. Seems like this should be possible via a plugin.

Additional would be device created, and location data.

[curiosity]

Hi I’m interested in doing this too! Has your workaround changed since then?

[davidolrik]

Create and modify date should live in the YAML frontmatter as the OS provided values are very unreliable.
Moving a file or restoring from a backup could change the create and modify date, where as a text in the note would require a user or a plugin to actively change it.

[darylchc]

Just to check in with the community for any updates.

Is there now a way to add DATE CREATED in YAML front matter?