Joplin Plugin — Frontmatter Overview

Create dynamic tables based on frontmatter in your notes. Works on both desktop and mobile.

Quick Example

Given these two notes in a notebook called Books read:

| Note 1 | Note 2 | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ---title: Book 1rating: 5pages: 200---Thoughts about book... | ---title: Book 2pages: 300author: Author 2rating: 2--- |

Using the following code block in a note:

```frontmatter-overview
from: notebook:"Books read"
properties:
  - LINE_NUM AS Number
  - NOTE_LINK AS Title
  - title AS Book
  - author
  - rating AS ⭐
  - pages
sort: rating DESC
sum: pages 
average: 
- pages
- rating
```

Will generate this table:

| Number | Title | Book | author | ⭐ | pages | |--------|------------|--------|----------|-------------------|---------------------------------------| | 1 | Note 1 | Book 1 | | 5 | 200 | | 2 | Note 2 | Book 2 | Author 2 | 2 | 300 | | | | | | Average: 3.50 | Sum: 500 Average: 250.00 |

❗Does not work in Rich Text (WYSIWYG) editor. ❗

What is Frontmatter?

Frontmatter is a block of YAML metadata at the top of a note, enclosed in triple dashes:

---
title: Example
rating: 5
---

You can also use three underscores instead of dashes as delimiters for the frontmatter if Joplin's syntax highlighting is an issue for you. This plugin supports Markdown links and images in the frontmatter, although they are not valid YAML. Images need to be Joplin resources in order to be rendered correctly.
A note with invalid YAML syntax will be shown with empty values in the custom properties.

Tip: Add the NOTE_LINK column to easily find the problematic notes and fix their frontmatter.

Overview Block Options

Using a code block with the language set to frontmatter-overview will trigger this plugin to render a table in the viewer.

| Key | Description | Type | |------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------| | from | Joplin search filter based on this syntax — all matching notes will turn into a row in the table. | string | | properties | List of frontmatter fields or special properties — each will be a column in the rendered table. Use AS to rename the property in the table header. | array | | sort | (Optional) Sort the table by a property (add DESC for descending). Values need to match one of the original property names. | string or array |
| excludeEeempty | (Optional) Exclude notes without any of the relevant frontmatter properties from the overview. | boolean, default false | | count | (Optional) Add a count of the non-empty values of a property to the footer of the table. Values need to match one of the original property names. | string or array | | sum | (Optional) Add the sum of a property to the footer of the table. Non-numerical values are ignored. Values need to match one of the original property names. | string or array | | average | (Optional) Add the average of a property to the footer of the table. Non-numerical values are ignored. Values need to match one of the original property names. | string or array |

Special Properties

• NOTE_LINK: A clickable link to the note using its title.
• LINE_NUM: The line number.
• NUM_BACKLINKS: The number of notes that link to the current note.

Features

• Embed multiple tables per note.
• Create permanent tables via Tools → Frontmatter Overview → Make tables in current note permanent (desktop only).
• Notes missing a property will have an empty cell, so there's no need to have perfect frontmatter in all notes.
• Notes with invalid frontmatter are included with empty custom property values (special properties like NOTE_LINK still work).
• The note containing the code block is excluded from the search.
• Set the maximum width and/or height of images in the settings.

Source Code

Find the source code here: https://github.com/Meisenburger13/joplin-frontmatter-overview

Please create an issue if you find a bug or are missing a feature and I will take look!