obsidian Timelines

Generate a chronological timeline of all notes with the specified set of tags.

Inserting a Timeline

1. Write inside a note (where you want the timeline to be inserted) the list of tags (separated by a ; semi-colon) for the notes to be included in the timeline. e.g. tag1;tag2;tag3
2. Select the written tag list
3. ctrl/cmd + P -> Choose add timeline command
4. The tag1;tag2;tag3 selected string will be replaced with html that will render the timeline.

NOTE: if the instructions are still unclear, find a detailed step by step guide here https://github.com/Darakah/obsidian-timelines/issues/2

Example

Timeline Tagging a note

For a note to be included in a timeline the following must be valid:

1. The timeline tag must be included in the YAML info of that note

---
tags: [timeline, test, me, now]
---

2. The note must have all the specified tags to be included in the search (must also be in the YAML info). This note example above will be included if all of the following searches (assuming its timeline span info is valid): test , test;me , test;me;now (and all other combinations)
3. Note must contain a timeline info span (it is not hidden in preview to keep note clean) containing the information to be presented (at least the date must be valid all other fields are optional, a non-valid date will cause the note to be ignored when the timeline is being built)

<span class='ob-timelines' data-date='1444-10-00-00' data-title='TITLE' data-img = 'URL'> D
  E S C R I P T I O N </span> 

The note will be ignored in the following cases:

• no timeline tag in the YAML (or the modified tag from the settings)
• Note does not contain all the tags from the search list
• No timeline span info block
• Class name is wrong ob-timelines must be specified
• The used date is not VALID, must be in the following format YEAR-MONTH-DAY-MINUTES (check info section below for more details)

Timeline Properties

Timeline Span block

• Hidden in preview by default in order to keep the note clean

Date

• The most important and essential info, if it is not valid the note will be ignored

• Valid date format:

  • YEAR-MONTH-DAY-HOUR
  • Only integers (numbers) are allowed in the date other then the 4 seperators - used to distinguish the different groups
  • The length of each element i.e. YEAR can be of any length for example 1234124314
  • The same applies to MONTH, DAY and HOUR. this means if your input time is not valid the plugin will not check that. Why this choice? If this plugin is used for a fantasy setup where the # of month are not only 12 for example.
  • ALL 4 GROUPS must be specified however if they don't exist / not want to be shown replace them with a zero. For example if an event only has the year and the month it can be written as follows 2300-02-00-00 this will be rendered on the timeline as 2300-02 (the trailing zeros will be removed). For only a year 2300-00-00-00 -> 2300
  • IMPORTANT: the sorting is based on the date being converted to an integer after parsing out the - this means to get the proper sorting, if minutes are not added you need to replace with 00 (the maximum number of integer for that date category.

• Title:

  • Optional
  • If a title is not specified the name of the note will be used

• Description:

  • Optional
  • If a description is not specified an empty section will be shown

• Background Image:

  • Optional
  • If an image is not specified no image will be shown (just text)
  • If an invalid url is given (an empty black section will be seen for that note card)
  • Currently only http & absolute local path are will render, in the current obsidian release of v0.10.13 obsidian links for background images are blocked from rendering, hopefully it is promised that this will be removed in the upcuming v0.10.14 release.