Organize by date in metadata

[LeslyeCream]

I would like to organize my files by creation date in the metadata, but the problem is that they all have the following format: Created at: 03/05/2019 | 22:00

I have searched all the documentation but I can't find anything that helps me (maybe regex(?) to get it.

Any idea if it would be possible? Maybe I'm missing something.

[SebastianMC]

Hi @LeslyeCream,

this feature is not supported.
For sorting, the metadata values are used directly, as they exist in notes, no transformation or extraction can be done.

At the same time this looks like a good candidate for an improvement and at glance a low hanging fruit.
Yet, after spending some time on a PoC implementation (see the branch 171-poc-metadata-value-extractors-idea) it turned out to be far more complex.

Putting this on hold as a new feature request, time is the limit for me now.

The partial implementation in the branch 171-poc-metadata-value-extractors-idea contains:

• defined new syntax to allow for specification of metadata value extractor
• extended the sorting spec parser to detect and recognize the new syntax
• defined two extractors (and their syntax) to support dd/mm/yyyy and mm/dd/yyyy date formats extraction
• extended the data structures generated by the parser to carry the parsing result in a form ready to use by the sorting engine

The remaining implementation steps:

• extend the sorting engine to use the metadata extractor if it was specified
• make the code production quality: improve readability, better naming, DRY, minimize the risk of regression bugs
• create the required new unit tests for extended parser and sorting engine features

I don't think that there is anyone brave enough to take the challenge of completing the implementation: the codebase is complex, the feature probably falls into category of rare edge cases, also the plugin in a niche software.

In other words it has to wait