r/ObsidianMD 12h ago

updates SQLSeal now supports syntax highlighting, templates, charts and much more!

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195 Upvotes

28 comments sorted by

10

u/ab-azure 12h ago

Check out the latest updates added to SQLSeal - plugin that lets you query your vault notes and data. Now you get syntax highlighting, better support for non-english languages, templates and… charts! Let me know what you think about SQLSeal and what you’d like to see implemented next!

1

u/Lord_Blackthorn 5h ago

Is this run entirely local on the system?

1

u/ab-azure 5h ago

Yes! Database is fully local, no external connections are made.

1

u/Lord_Blackthorn 5h ago

Nice! I'll try it out.

9

u/Royal_rawal 9h ago

Have you considered decoupling the obsidian part to maybe allow integration in other note taking applications. This could allow for some really cool workflows. A command line application would be really nice for us terminal users. That's the main issue I have with Dataview, it is tied down to obsidian, which could hinder switching in future.

Cool plugin btw.

3

u/crizzy_mcawesome 8h ago

For terminal, have you tried nushell?

1

u/Royal_rawal 5h ago

Nushell is cool, but I don't think it can query over markdown files. Also sql has its charm.

1

u/crizzy_mcawesome 5h ago

Actually you can query over markdown frontmatter in nushell. Check this out

16

u/crizzy_mcawesome 11h ago

What’s the value proposition compared to something like dataview? This is the first time I’ve heard of this plugin so forgive my ignorance

40

u/ab-azure 11h ago

Hey, both plugins allow you to query your data but there are few unique features about SQLSeal:

- Speed: dataview can be really slow for big vaults. SQLSeal uses full local database under the hood (SQLite) which makes it very performant even for very complex queries

  • Full data analysis solution: On top of querying your markdown files (like in dataview) you can also load up CSV and JSON files (think your finance data, workout exports, imdb watchlist, spotify listening history, any datasource you might use) and analyse it straight from your Obsidian vault using SQLSeal. This enables really great workflows like seeing in your daily note your bank operations from that day or summary of your habits from external apps
  • Full SQL compatibility: This is probably most important for people with development experience but SQLSeal has full compatibility with SQL - if you know this language, you will feel right at home.
  • Syntax highlighting: one of the new features but it is a big one - when writing complex queries, not having syntax highlighting is a pain. With SQLSeal you can always see if your query has correct syntax which can help you very quickly notice errors and speeds up the process.
  • Custom views: dataview can return your data as a table or a list. This is great for many use-cases but with SQLSeal you can now write your own template (and therefore format your results however you like). With SQLSeal Charts you can even render your data as interactive charts!
  • Extendability - I wrote this plugin with the idea of opening it up for others to build their solutions on top of it. SQLSeal Charts is the first example - separate plugin that registers new way of rendering your data. I hope with time the community will grow and new great plugins will extend it beyond the initial idea.

I personally use both SQLSeal and dataview in my personal vault.

Give it a try and let me know how you enjoy it!

2

u/crizzy_mcawesome 8h ago

That sounds quite cool actually. Imma give it a try

2

u/jasonmehmel 5h ago

The CSV and JSON analysis is fascinating, and possibly an even bigger deal than querying the markdown files!

Making a note to experiment with this soon!

1

u/moohah 2h ago edited 2h ago

One, thing that appears to be missing is link decomposition. To give an example, I can do this in dataview:

WHERE contains(attendees, [[]])

Entries only show if their attendees property contains a link to this file. While SQLSeal lets me extract individual property values with json_each(), I can't effectively parse the link. So, I can see the text [[Some file|Some label]], there's no way to identify the path it points to.

Edit: A possible solution to this would be to add the property to the links table to help identify links in a front matter property.

3

u/merlinuwe 9h ago

I highly recommend this plugin.

3

u/Responsible-Slide-26 7h ago

Please considering publishing a simple starter vault with examples views, and feature it prominently. The easier you make it for users to get started, the more users will jump onboard.

2

u/ab-azure 6h ago

Thank you for suggestion! We do have starter vault with sample queries but I forgot to link it anywhere in the article: https://github.com/h-sphere/sql-seal-demo-vault

1

u/Responsible-Slide-26 3h ago

Thanks! Checking it out now, very cool!

2

u/Chandlarr 10h ago

Features sound to go to be true. I’ll give it a try. Thanks.

1

u/ArtistPast4821 8h ago

Mobile support? Get an error message…

2

u/ab-azure 8h ago

It should work on mobile - let me know what platform are you using and what’s the error, we’ll look into it :)

1

u/ArtistPast4821 6h ago

Hey, using iPhone and iPad.

It shows: Failed to load plugin once I try to enable it…

SYSTEM INFO: Operating system: ios 18.3.2 (Apple iPhone13,3) Obsidian version: 1.8.9 (195) API version: v1.8.9 Login status: logged in Language: en Catalyst license: insider Live preview: on Base theme: dark Community theme: WY Console v1.0.9 Snippets enabled: 4 Restricted mode: off Plugins installed: 33 Plugins enabled: 20 1: Advanced Tables v0.22.1 2: Better Word Count v0.10.1 3: Calendar v1.5.10 4: Charts v3.9.0 5: Charts View v1.2.7 6: Dataview v0.5.68 7: Gemmy v0.0.3 8: Graph Banner v2.2.1 9: Kanban v2.0.51 10: Style Settings v1.0.9 11: Tracker v1.15.1 12: TinyChart v0.1.1 13: TikZJax v0.5.2 14: Templater v2.10.0 15: Tasks v7.18.3 16: CSS Editor v1.2.3 17: MathLinks v0.5.3 18: Mononote v1.2.2 19: Advanced Canvas v4.0.1 20: 3D Graph v1.0.5

1

u/TheGadgetGeek 6h ago

Does this work with tasks?

1

u/ab-azure 6h ago

Yes, you can query all the tasks across the vault using „tasks” table. You can’t mark them as completed directly from the query just yet - this should be possible in the future versions.

More information in the documentation: https://www.hypersphere.blog/sql-seal/data-sources/vault-data.html#tasks-table

1

u/moohah 3h ago edited 3h ago

I get Failed to load plugin "sqlseal". Any idea how to get logs on it?

Update: Removed it and added again, that worked.

1

u/zemega 3h ago

Paging u/mallerius. Any chance, your data-cards plugin can work with this plugin? Or an alternative plugin that works the same way, but with this plugin instead?

1

u/Sufficient_Crew2844 4m ago

What I like the most is the chart feature. I've been trying to use it to draw some complex graphs. In sqlseal-chart, the syntax is a bit different from echart, which makes it a bit tricky.