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