Is there a way to insert a "created" and "modified" timestamp on creation/write?

[jmrussell]

Is there a way with the plugin (or another recommended, obsidian friendly way) to record the timestamp a note was created or last modified?

I'm new to the whole obsidian space but I've used nvim for a long time -- I think I could just write an autocmd that writes that information somewhere within the note, but I'd be interested if there's a better solution. Please let me know if I missed a similar discussion, somewhere, I did look but didn't find much.

Really enjoying this plugin, thanks for the great work!

[epwalsh]

Hey @jmrussell, you could accomplish this by configuring a pre_write_note callback in your obsidian.nvim config. For example:

      callbacks = {
        -- Runs right before writing the buffer for a note.
        ---@param client obsidian.Client
        ---@param note obsidian.Note
        ---@diagnostic disable-next-line: unused-local
        pre_write_note = function(client, note)
          note:add_field("modified", os.date())
        end,
      },

[Oneechan69]

@epwalsh I'm using this, but when I press u to undo a change in normal mode, it undoes the frontmatter change rather than the edit I just made. Any ideas for what to do?

[kyoryo]

I use these to create more field such as modified and created_at on my frontmatter function

  -- Optional, alternatively you can customize the frontmatter data.
  ---@return table
  note_frontmatter_func = function(note)
    -- Add the title of the note as an alias.
    if note.title then
      note:add_alias(note.title)
    end

    local out = {
      id = note.id,
      aliases = note.aliases,
      tags = note.tags,
    }

    -- add date only on init
    local getDate = function(metadata)
      local date = os.date "%Y-%m-%d"
      if metadata == nil then
        return date
      end
      return metadata.date
    end

    local getHubs = function(metadata)
      local hubs = "[[]]"
      if metadata == nil then
        return hubs
      end
      return metadata.hubs
    end

    local getRefs = function(metadata)
      local refs = "[[]]"
      if metadata == nil then
        return refs
      end
      return metadata.refs
    end

    note.metadata = {
      date = getDate(note.metadata),
      -- last_edited = os.date "%Y %B %d",
      last_edited = os.date "%Y-%m-%d",
      hubs = getHubs(note.metadata),
      refs = getRefs(note.metadata),
    }
    -- `note.metadata` contains any manually added fields in the frontmatter.
    -- So here we just make sure those fields are kept in the frontmatter.
    if note.metadata ~= nil and not vim.tbl_isempty(note.metadata) then
      for k, v in pairs(note.metadata) do
        out[k] = v
      end
    end

    return out
  end,

[Oneechan69]

Does it trigger when you press u? Because that's the issue I had with the other answer.

[kyoryo]

Sorry, What do you mean?
For what I know, after frontmatter made changes, pressing undo is expected to undo changes that frontmatter did.
This behaviour is same when you use every other formatter, such as gopls on golang filetype.

So in order to trigger frontmatter you need to :write your buffer. Maybe there are autocommand to trigger frontmatter when you pressing undo.

[Oneechan69]

Yeah I use auto-save.nvim, I changed it so it save every 5 secs instead of immediately.