Node

Here’s something interesting about software architecture: most systems make you think in terms of files and folders, but what if you thought in terms of things instead?

That’s what nodes are in Eidos. They’re not files—they’re more like containers that can hold different types of content. Think of them as smart boxes that know what they’re supposed to contain.

We have four types of these boxes:

• doc - for writing and thinking
• table - for organizing structured data
• folder - for organizing nodes
• dataview - for asking questions of your data

The clever bit is that these nodes live in a tree structure, just like folders, but they’re much more powerful than folders. Each node knows what it is and how to behave. A document node knows it should render text beautifully. A table node knows it should let you sort and filter data.

You can think of the whole system as modular. Want new types of nodes? Build extensions. It’s like having a workshop where you can create new types of smart boxes whenever you need them.

The tree structure gives you the familiar hierarchical organization you’re used to, but each item in that tree is actually a sophisticated data container with its own capabilities.

How We Store Node Information

Node information is stored in the eidos__tree table

  CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS eidos__tree (
    id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    name TEXT,
    type TEXT,
    parent_id TEXT NULL,
    is_pinned BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0,
    is_full_width BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0,
    is_locked BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0,
    icon TEXT NULL,
    cover TEXT NULL,
    is_deleted BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0,
    hide_properties BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0,
    position REAL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    updated_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
  );

Field Definitions

Field	Type	What it’s for
id	TEXT	Unique identifier for the node
name	TEXT	Node name
type	TEXT	Node type (doc/table/dataview/folder)
icon	TEXT	Node icon
cover	TEXT	Node cover
parent_id	TEXT	Parent node ID
is_pinned	BOOLEAN	Whether the node is pinned
created_at	TIMESTAMP	Creation timestamp
updated_at	TIMESTAMP	Last update timestamp
is_deleted	BOOLEAN	Whether the node is deleted
position	REAL	Node position
is_full_width	BOOLEAN	Whether to display in full width
is_locked	BOOLEAN	Whether the node is locked
hide_properties	BOOLEAN	Whether to hide properties

Extending Nodes

We have prepared the eidos__extnode table for storing extension nodes. You can combine it with Micro Block extensions to customize the display and interaction of nodes.

  CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS eidos__extnode (
    id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    blob BLOB,
    text TEXT,
    path TEXT,
    type TEXT NOT NULL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    updated_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
  );

Field	Type	What it’s for
id	TEXT	Unique identifier for the node
name	TEXT	Node name
type	TEXT	Node type, e.g., excalidraw
blob	BLOB	Node content
text	TEXT	Node text
path	TEXT	Node path
created_at	TIMESTAMP	Creation timestamp
updated_at	TIMESTAMP	Last update timestamp

We have prepared three different data fields for storing different types of data. Which field to use depends on the extension type. For example, the excalidraw extension uses the text field to store text data, because excalidraw node content is in JSON text format.

• blob is used to store binary data, such as images, audio, video, etc.
• text is used to store text data, such as text, Markdown, etc.
• path is used to store path data, such as file paths, URLs, etc.