Frontmatter is a common format to attach additional metadata (data about data) to markdown documents. Many tools support it as a markdown extension.

In SilverBullet, there are multiple ways to attach Metadata to a page; frontmatter is the most popular one.

You create frontmatter by starting your markdown document with --- followed by YAML encoded attributes and then ending with --- again. Followed by the regular body of your document. This very page contains some frontmatter, click on it to see the underlying code.

Here is another example:

   

---
status: Draft
tags:
- tag1
- tag2
---
## This is a section
This is content

For convenience, you may use the attribute.subAttribute notation, which internally will expand:

attribute.subAttribute: 10

to

attribute:
   subAttribute: 10

Special attributes

While SilverBullet allows arbitrary metadata to be added to pages, there are a few attributes with special meaning:

• name (DISALLOWED): is an attribute used for page names, you should not set it.
• displayName (string): very similar in effect as aliases but will use this name for the page in certain contexts.
• aliases (array of strings): allow you to specify a list of alternative names for this page, which can be used to navigate or link to this page
• tags (array of strings or string): an alternative (and perhaps preferred) way to assign Tags to a page. There are various ways to define these, take your pick:

  tags: tag1, tag2 # with commas
  tags: tag1 tag2 # with spaces
  tags: "#tag1 #tag2" # with pound signs and quotes (you get completion)
  tags: # as a list
  - tag1
  - tag2
  tags: # as a list with pound signs and quotes
  - "#tag1"
  - "#tag2"

For specific use cases, like Page Template or Slash Template, frontmatter may have specific meaning.