Natural Language Dates (Revived) 🌍

This is a revived and improved version of the popular "Natural Language Dates" plugin for Obsidian. It brings the plugin back to life with a modern engine, true multilingual support, and smarter time handling.

New Features

v0.9.0 - Advanced Multilingual Support 🚀

• 🌍 Complete Multilingual Engine: Full support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian!
  • Each language works 100% with its own native words and units
  • Examples: @ato 2 fun (Japanese), @in 2 Minuten (German), @dans 2 min (French), @over 2 minuten (Dutch), @en 2 minutos (Spanish), @tra 2 minuti (Italian)
  • All time units (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years) are fully translated
  • All weekdays are recognized in all languages
  • Dynamic regex generation from translations - no hardcoded words!
• Advanced Relative Dates: Support for complex date expressions!
  • Combined durations: @in 2 weeks and 3 days, @dans 2 semaines et 3 jours
  • Weekday with time: @next Monday at 3pm, @prochain lundi à 15h
  • Date ranges: @from Monday to Friday, @de lundi à vendredi
  • Week ranges: @next week (returns Monday to Sunday of next week)
  • Works in all supported languages with native translations
• Smart Contextual Suggestions: Intelligent suggestions that learn from you!
  • History-based suggestions: The plugin learns your frequently used date patterns and prioritizes them in suggestions
  • Context-aware detection: Automatically detects dates already present in your current document (within ±10 lines) and suggests them
  • Multi-language context detection: Context analysis works with all enabled languages - detects dates in French, English, Japanese, and more!
  • Optimized performance: No vault-wide caching - only analyzes the current document for fast, efficient suggestions
  • All smart features can be toggled on/off individually in settings

v0.8.0

• 🌍 Multilingual Support: Now supports English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, and Portuguese!
  • Examples: @tomorrow, @in 20 minutes, @Next Monday, @next friday.
• Smart Time Parsing: The plugin intelligently detects if you included a time in your sentence.
• Hybrid Links:
  • Dates without time: [[2024-12-30]]
  • Dates with time: [[2024-12-30]] 23:45 (Keeps your graph clean!).

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How to Install

Via BRAT (Recommended for now)

Since this is a new fork, the quickest way to get updates is via the BRAT plugin:

1. Install BRAT from the Community Plugins store.
2. Add a Beta Plugin with this URL: https://github.com/Amato21/nldates-revived
3. Enjoy!

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Usage

Date Autosuggest

Type @ (default trigger) followed by a natural date.

• @today → [[2024-12-30]]
• @tomorrow → [[2024-12-31]]
• @in 20 minutes → [[2024-12-30]] 23:50
• @in 2 weeks and 3 days → [[2025-01-22]]
• @next Monday at 3pm → [[2025-01-06]] 15:00
• @from Monday to Friday → [[2025-01-06]], [[2025-01-07]], [[2025-01-08]], [[2025-01-09]], [[2025-01-10]]
• @next week → [[2025-01-06]], [[2025-01-07]], [[2025-01-08]], [[2025-01-09]], [[2025-01-10]], [[2025-01-11]], [[2025-01-12]]

Press Shift + Enter to keep the original text as an alias (e.g. [[2024-12-30|today]]).

Commands (Ctrl/Cmd + P)

• Parse natural language date: Replaces selected text with a link (e.g. select "demain" -> becomes [[2024-12-31]]).
• Insert the current date and time: Quickly insert a timestamp with both date and time.
• Insert the current date: Inserts only the current date.
• Insert the current time: Inserts only the current time.
• Date Picker: Opens a calendar view to pick a date visually.

Configuration

Go to Settings > Natural Language Dates:

• Languages: Check the languages you want to enable.
• Date Format: How the date part looks (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD).
• Time Format: How the time part looks (e.g. HH:mm).
• Separator: Character between date and time (if used).
• Smart Suggestions: Enable intelligent suggestions (enabled by default)
  • Enable smart suggestions: Master toggle for all intelligent features
  • History-based suggestions: Learn from your frequently used date patterns
  • Context-based suggestions: Detect dates from the current document context

Note: History data is stored in .obsidian/plugins/nldates-revived/history.json and is limited to 100 most frequent entries for optimal performance.

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🙏 Credits & Acknowledgements

This project stands on the shoulders of giants. Huge thanks to:

• Argentina Ortega Sainz (argenos): The original creator of this plugin. This revival is based on their excellent work.
• RensOliemans: For the major contributions and foundational work on the multilingual support.
• Amato21: Maintainer of this "Revived" version.

Powered by the chrono-node library.

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🔧 For Developers & URI

The plugin creates a global object for use in other plugins or via Obsidian URI.

URI Action: obsidian://nldates?day=tomorrow&newPane=yes

API Usage:

const nldatesPlugin = app.plugins.getPlugin("nldates-revived");
const parsedResult = nldatesPlugin.parseDate("next year");

console.log(parsedResult.moment.format("YYYY"));

Architecture

The plugin uses a modular architecture with specialized components:

• HistoryManager (src/history-manager.ts): Manages user selection history

  • Stores frequently used date patterns (max 100 entries)
  • Provides synchronous cache for fast suggestions
  • Normalizes suggestions (capitalizes first letter for consistency)
  • Persists data to .obsidian/plugins/nldates-revived/history.json

• ContextAnalyzer (src/context-analyzer.ts): Analyzes document context for smart suggestions

  • Scans ±10 lines around cursor for date patterns
  • Uses dynamic regex patterns generated from translations (multi-language support)
  • Implements temporary caching (5 seconds) for performance
  • Automatically updates patterns when languages change
  • Supports all enabled languages (French, English, Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch)

Both components are optimized for performance: no vault-wide scanning, only analyzes the current document, and uses efficient caching strategies.

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Maintenance & Community

This project is open source (MIT License). The primary goal is to provide a working, reliable tool for the Obsidian community.

Community First: If this repository becomes inactive or unmaintained in the future, please feel free to fork it and take over maintenance immediately—no permission needed! The community's needs come first, and we'd be delighted to see the project continue to evolve and improve.

Your contributions, forks, and improvements are always welcome! 🚀