Bases - display array or lists, interpretation issue and formatting

Help
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1

What I’m trying to do

My notes contain properties that are lists or arrays in form like

property:
  - "value a"
  - "value a  value b"
  - "value b"
  - "value c"

Bases will display these in tables only when wrapped in a formula. First issue: there are values, but rendering without using a formula makes it look like there are none.
When wrapped, the values appear space separated and it’s impossible to tell where an element starts or ends.

I want either a formatting option to visually separate elements, a separator or a list format within the cell.
Also I sometimes want to limit the output to a specific element (property[n]) - that also works only within a formula. I mention that for context, that itself works fine.

Things I have tried

When wrapping it in a formula

formulas: 
  propDisplay1: note.property
  propDisplay2: list(note.property)

The output will look the same in either case. Note that the first one is simply referencing the property without further processing.

This way I get results, but not without using formula. This is a setup for misinterpreting data, right? Without formulas I would assume no values are present, and even with formulas I can’t identify a single element. E.g. “value a”, “value b” is different from “value a value b”.

Anything like trying to use functions, that do not exist in this context, like join, map, … will fail obviously. Seems like it’s already a flattened and no chance to access an element? But as I can address a single element in a list, that seems to be not true.

So how do I manage to display a list or separate elements visually?

2

I don’t understand your problem… Columns with properties of type list are correctly shown in my case:

image
image1462×690 25.2 KB

Perhaps the problem is that the property is not of type list in your case? You can use the “All properties” side panel to ensure the type of your properties.

Side note. You can also use join in formulas like this:

my_formula: my_list.join(", ")

but I think it is preferable to use directly the property column, because that way you can easily edit the list in the table view.

3

I’m sorry but I’m really not sure what you mean by this :sweat_smile: :

I mean, if I copy/paste your example in a note in the sandbox vault and select the property to be displayed in the base, I get this:

list property
list property1578×246 13 KB

… where each item has a x on the right to be able to remove it … like in Properties in Live Preview …

4

Have to apologize, I was on mobile and oversaw a stupid mistake - yes, also in my simplified test data… That gave me the impression the behavior is odd/ not working as expected.

Original issue was partly due to hierachical properties. In that case you need a formula anyway. That’s the only part remaining, I can separate the values using join(", "), but Bases doesn’t feature this with single values and “x” as it does with non nested properties.

Thank you all. I could bite myself for overseeing and somewhat wasting your time.