My Papers project uses a YAML property that I named up. This property will be a link to an object, or concept, or discipline, or collection. The highest level is a Realm, which are few, such as “Data Science”, “Artificial Intelligence”, "Computational Physics, “Science”, “Mathematics”, “Petroleum Engineering”.
I was looking for a table showing the whole chain of links for every note, so I could check the depth of the understanding on a subject. The more understanding you have over a subject the longer the chain of connections of the note to the top level, or Realm. All the Realms have a common parent: “Home”, which I didn’t want it listed.
I started this script in dataviewjs using a while-loop. Then, modified to a do-while-loop, and finally decided to apply what I learned about recursion by building a recursive function. The breaking condition is when up contains the keyword “Home”.
This is the script:
function recursive(meta_up, pageSet) {
// recursive function that drills down to the highest level
if (meta_up === null || meta_up === undefined ) {
dv.span("There is a null or undefined value" + "<br>");
return
}
if (meta_up.path.includes("Home")) return;
let page = meta_up.path // path to next up
let meta = dv.page(page) // convert to page object
meta_up = meta.up // get up value
pageSet.add(page); // add it to the set
recursive(meta_up, pageSet) // drill down one level up
}
let pages = dv.pages('"Papers"') // notes under folder Papers
let grouped = pages // optional
.sort(p => p.filename, 'asc') // sort by file name
for (let g of grouped) { // iterate through notes
let pageSet = new Set(); // initialize a set
let meta_up = dv.page(g.file.path).up // get the next up level
dv.header(2, dv.fileLink(g.file.name)) // print note name
recursive(meta_up, pageSet); // recurse until up gone
let data = dv.array(Array.from(pageSet)) // convert to array
.map(p => dv.page(p));
dv.table(['Uplink', 'Alias'], data // build a table
.map(p => [p.file.link, p.aliases])
)
}
I called the function recursive, but you could call it something else.
This is a screenshot of the output:
Of course, the script can be improved. For instance, I don’t like how the message is displayed when the property up in the note is null or undefined. I print it with dv.span(), but it could look much better if it were a row in the sub-table.