Bases Preview — Obsidian Plugin

Inline note content previews inside Obsidian Bases table rows, plus a one-click button to create new notes with matching frontmatter.

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Features

Feature	Description
Content preview column	Adds a "Preview" column to every Bases table showing the first N characters of each linked note.
Hover expand	Hover a preview cell to see the full excerpt without leaving the table.
+ New note button	A + New note button appears below each Base table. Clicking it creates a markdown file pre-populated with YAML frontmatter matching the table's column headers.
Content source	Preview the full note body (minus frontmatter) or text under a specific heading.
Configurable length	Set the preview length (default 200 chars) in settings.

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Installation

Manual (recommended for now)

1. Clone or download this repository.

2. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into your vault's plugin folder:

   <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/bases-preview/
   

3. Reload Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Bases Preview → Enable.

Build from source

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Development (with inline source maps)
npm run dev

# Production build
npm run build

The build produces main.js in the project root.

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Settings

Open Settings → Bases Preview to configure:

Setting	Default	Description
Preview length	200	Max characters shown per preview cell.
Content source	Full body	Full body strips frontmatter and previews everything. Specific heading lets you enter a heading name — only text under that heading is previewed.
Heading name	(empty)	Shown when content source is "Specific heading". Case-insensitive match.
Show + New note button	On	Toggle the quick-add button below Base tables.

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How It Works

1. MutationObserver watches the DOM for changes (Bases dynamically renders its table views).
2. When a Bases table is detected (via data-type="bases" on the workspace leaf or class heuristics), the plugin:
   • Reads each row's internal link → resolves the TFile via metadataCache.
   • Calls vault.cachedRead() to get the note content.
   • Strips frontmatter, optionally extracts a heading section, truncates, and injects a <td> cell.
3. The + New note button introspects column headers and the first row's values to build YAML frontmatter for the new file.

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Development

obsidian-bases-preview/
├── main.ts            # Plugin entry point (TypeScript)
├── styles.css         # Injected styles
├── manifest.json      # Obsidian plugin manifest
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
├── esbuild.config.mjs # Build configuration
└── versions.json      # Obsidian version compatibility map

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Inspiration

This plugin was built in response to a request by u/tashmoo and u/DeliriumTrigger in this Reddit thread — inline note previews in Bases table rows with quick-add.

License

MIT