Bases Chart

Visualize your Obsidian Bases data as charts — directly inside your notes.

Features

• 8 chart types — bar, column (horizontal bar), pie, doughnut, gauge (half-doughnut), line, GitHub-style calendar heatmap, and stat (single-number KPI)
• SQL query language — familiar syntax for querying your Bases data
• Visual configuration — inline settings panel with dropdowns, toggles, draggable color palette, and live SQL preview
• Multi-metric queries — count multiple conditions in a single chart (e.g. "missing tags" vs "missing dates")
• Multi-source — compare data across multiple .base files side-by-side, or merge them with UNION
• Date bucketing — GROUP BY month(file.ctime) / year(...) / day(...) for time-series charts
• Relative-time functions — today(), now(), daysSince(), daysUntil(), year(), month(), day()
• Sorting — order bars by value or label, ascending or descending
• Data labels — show values at base, top, or outside of bars/slices with callout support for pie charts
• Appearance controls — custom colors with drag-to-reorder, gridline toggle, legend toggle, font size and colour for stat charts, configurable chart height

Quick Start

Add a fenced code block with bases-chart and write a SQL query:

```bases-chart
type: bar
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "Todos.base" GROUP BY status
```

Or start with an empty block and use the gear icon to configure visually:

```bases-chart
```

You can also insert a chart via the command palette: Insert bases chart.

Configuration

The YAML config has two parts: appearance (stored in YAML) and data (stored as SQL):

type: bar                    # chart type (bar | column | pie | doughnut | gauge | line | calendar | stat)
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "Todos.base" GROUP BY status
title: My Chart              # optional title
showGridlines: true          # show/hide gridlines
showLegend: true             # show/hide legend
dataLabels: outside          # none | base | top | outside
colors:                      # custom color palette
  - "#4e79a7"
  - "#f28e2b"
height: 400                  # chart height in pixels (default 400; 200 for stat)
fontSize: 72                 # stat chart only — number font size in pixels (default 72)
fontColor: "#4e79a7"         # stat chart only — hex colour; omit to inherit the theme

SQL Reference

Basic queries

-- Count notes grouped by a property
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "Todos.base" GROUP BY status

-- Show a value per note
SELECT file.name, Priority FROM "Projects.base/Starred"

-- Computed values
SELECT daysSince(file.ctime) FROM "Todos.base/Starred" ORDER BY value DESC

-- Aggregate with grouping
SELECT AVG(rating) FROM "Books.base" GROUP BY categories

SELECT clause

FROM clause

WHERE clause

Top-level WHERE supports tag and folder filters:

WHERE tags CONTAINS 'project'
WHERE folder = 'Work'
WHERE tags CONTAINS 'todo' AND folder = 'Work'

Per-metric WHERE (inside a multi-metric SELECT) supports a richer comparator set, including relative-time functions and date-bucket wrappers on the left-hand side:

-- Operators: =, !=, >, >=, <, <=, CONTAINS, IS EMPTY, IS NOT EMPTY
COUNT(*) WHERE status != 'done'
COUNT(*) WHERE Priority >= 3
COUNT(*) WHERE date IS NOT EMPTY

-- today() expands to 'YYYY-MM-DD' (local date)
COUNT(*) WHERE day(file.ctime) = today()       -- created today
COUNT(*) WHERE month(file.ctime) = month(today()) -- created this month (see note below)

-- now() expands to current epoch milliseconds
COUNT(*) WHERE file.mtime >= 1760000000000     -- modified since this timestamp

Note: month(today()) currently requires today() to resolve to a value whose month(...) wrapper produces the same bucket format. The cleanest pattern for "created this month" is still to group by month and pick the current bucket — or use a literal '2026-04'.

GROUP BY

GROUP BY status               -- by a property
GROUP BY day(file.ctime)      -- per-day bucket   → "YYYY-MM-DD"
GROUP BY month(file.ctime)    -- per-month bucket → "YYYY-MM"
GROUP BY year(file.ctime)     -- per-year bucket  → "YYYY"

Date-bucket grouping works on any date property — frontmatter dates (GROUP BY month(published)) as well as file timestamps.

Multi-metric SELECT

Each metric gets its own bar/slice:

SELECT
  COUNT(*) WHERE tags IS EMPTY AS "Missing Tags",
  COUNT(*) WHERE topics IS EMPTY AS "Missing Topics",
  COUNT(*) WHERE date IS EMPTY AS "Missing Dates"
FROM "Todos.base"

ORDER BY

ORDER BY value DESC    -- sort by bar height
ORDER BY value ASC     -- smallest first
ORDER BY label ASC     -- alphabetical
ORDER BY label DESC    -- reverse alphabetical

Built-in functions

Chart Types

Examples

Todo age ranking

type: bar
sql: SELECT daysSince(file.ctime) FROM "Todos.base/Starred" ORDER BY value DESC
dataLabels: outside
showGridlines: false

Project status gauge

type: gauge
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "Projects.base" GROUP BY status
dataLabels: outside

Note activity calendar

type: calendar
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "Todos.base"
title: Note Activity

Data quality audit

type: bar
sql: >
  SELECT
    COUNT(*) WHERE tags IS EMPTY AS "No Tags",
    COUNT(*) WHERE topics IS EMPTY AS "No Topics",
    COUNT(*) WHERE date IS EMPTY AS "No Date"
  FROM "Todos.base"
dataLabels: outside

Notes created today (stat tile)

type: stat
title: Notes created today
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) WHERE day(file.ctime) = today() AS "Today" FROM notes
fontSize: 96
fontColor: "#4e79a7"

Notes created each month (time series)

type: bar
title: Notes per month
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM notes GROUP BY month(file.ctime) ORDER BY label asc
dataLabels: top
showLegend: false

KPI row — three stat tiles side-by-side

Drop these in a 3-column layout (e.g. the Dashboards plugin) for a tidy summary strip:

type: stat
title: Total notes
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) AS "Notes" FROM notes

type: stat
title: Created this month
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) WHERE month(file.ctime) = '2026-04' AS "This month" FROM notes
fontColor: "#59a14f"

type: stat
title: Modified in last 24h
sql: SELECT COUNT(*) WHERE file.mtime >= 1760000000000 AS "Last 24h" FROM notes
fontColor: "#f28e2b"

Installation

From Obsidian

1. Open Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
2. Search for Bases Chart
3. Click Install, then Enable

From source

cd /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins
git clone https://github.com/kevinmcaleer/obsidian-bases-chart.git
cd bases-chart
npm install
npm run build

Restart Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins.

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create a folder bases-chart inside .obsidian/plugins/
3. Copy the three files into that folder
4. Restart Obsidian and enable the plugin

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # one-shot build with source maps
npm run build  # production build (minified, auto-bumps version)

License

MIT