Sort by created YAML frontmatter?

[bloominburges]

I can’t make this plugin work as intended. Very simple objective: Sort notes by a custom YAML frontmatter field called “created:” which contains dates in the fields.

Name of my vault: Research Vault
My script is located in “Templates/sortspec” — and this is the path in the plugin settings (screenshot further below)
My sortspec note in “Templates”:

---
sorting-spec: |-
  target-folder: Research Vault
  < a-z by-metadata: created
---

My custom sort settings:

[SebastianMC]

Hi @bloominburges,

a few remarks at glance:

• the instruction target-folder: Research Vault tells the plugin to sort items inside a folder named Research Vault residing in the root of your vault. Is this your intention and the folder in the vault is named exactly the same as the vault itself?
  • if you want to sort all folders and subfolders in the vault, use target-folder: /*
  • if you want to sort only the items inside the root folder of the vault, use target-folder: /
• all notes named sortspec in any location of the vault are scanned for sorting specs by default. So, if you keep the sorting specification in a note with such a name, no need to additionally specify its path '/Templates/sortspec' in plugin settings. It doesn't hurt, at the same time it is not necessary and superfluous
• the sorting specification itself looks correct (with the above question about target-folder: value)
  • sorting by a metadata created will work under assumption that the metadata values are in a standard Obsidian format, which is one of ISO formats, like 2017-04-27T23:45:05.654Z or 2017-04-27T23:45 or similar. You can recognize the formats by trying to sort them alphabetically in your mind. If it doesn't work (e.g. month goes first 12/23/2024) it won't work for sorting either. However, some non standard formats are supported by the plugin - let's discuss that in a next step, if necessary

Other than that, no additional questions or remarks.

Please let me know if this was helpful

[averagejooe]

heya,
Sorry please can you help me I've been trying with CGPT to no avail on how to sort by this note frontmatter. I used the template from this thread.

My sortspec md

sorting-spec: |
by-metadata: date created
using-extractor: "[yyyy-mm-dd]"
order: asc

(tried removing order asc it doesn't actually do anything). The custom sort itself run, but it sort by filename in ascending manner instead.

RealNotes md frontmatter created via Linter to use ISO format

---

date created: 2025-08-30T07:40:01

Dataview js can actually sort by that iso date so it's not actually of too high importance too fix, but I'd really appreciate if you could help me with this 🙏

[SebastianMC]

Hi @averagejooe,

under assumption that the dates in md frontmatter come in the ISO format from your example:

---
date created: 2025-08-30T07:40:01
---

the sorting specification sufficient to sort based on these metadata looks like:

---
sorting-spec: |
  < a-z by-metadata: date created
---

or an equivalent specification using a more verbose syntax:

---
sorting-spec: |
  order-asc: a-z by-metadata: date created
---

Make sure that the sorting specification is placed in the folder to be sorted, or explicitly indicate the target folder to be sorted in the the spec:

---
sorting-spec: |
  target-folder: /MyData
  order-asc: a-z by-metadata: date created
---

[averagejooe]

Many thanks!! This works perfectly. I will be sure to support you good Sir 🥰