Dataviewjs: List all paragraphs in my daily notes that contain link [[JohnDoe]]

What I’m trying to do

I want to extent Nicole van der Hoeven’s people template (https://youtu.be/4jYUQXy0nsg?si=O8k_oHlAs3SZ1UWp&t=762) such that all paragraphs in any daily note mentioning “[[JohnDoe]]” are listed at the bottom of JohnDoe’s note.

Question1: Is it correct that I cannot get and filter paragraphs of daily notes in DataView?

Things I have tried

I assume Question1 is true, thus I use the following dataviewjs script:

const pages = dv.pages('"daily"');

const pagesWithContent = await Promise.all(
	    pages.map(async page => {
	    const content = await dv.io.load(page.file.path);
	    return {page, content};
	})
);

const filteredPagesWithContent = pagesWithContent.filter(page => {
	return page.content.includes('[[JohnDoe]]');
});

let tableRows = [];
for (const { page, content } of filteredPagesWithContent) {
    let paragraphs = content.split("\n").filter(para => para.includes('[[JohnDoe]]'));
	let link = dv.fileLink(page.file.path);
    let paraContent = paragraphs.join("\n\n");
    tableRows.push([link, paraContent]);
};

dv.table(["Page", "Paragraphs"], tableRows);

Question2: Is it possible to use dv.pages(...); to get all the daily pages that contain link “[[JohnDoe]]”?

Question3: Do I really need to call dv.io.load(page.file.path)?

Question4: How do I get the formatting in the table right? For instance, if I have in my daily notes the paragraph

THX:: Tipps by [[Hermann]]:
  * [[JohnDoe]] should do foo
  * otherwise keep doing bar

I would like to get the whole paragraph in my table, but I only see:

Q3: i always use that
Q5: if you use dv.io.load with regex you can use something like .*${currentFile}.* or .*\[\[${basename}\]\].* to get the whole line or paragraph as context

Thanks, Yurcee, I guess dv.io.load is the way to go then.

I don’t understand your Q5: It is an answer to my Question4, right? What should those regexs in dv.io.load do?

But with dv.io.load(page.file.path), I do get the whole notes, exactly as they are in my daily folder. I did find a bug in my script wrt Question4: I should use content.split("\n\n") instead of content.split("\n"). However, the paragraph is displayed in the table with empty lines and I don’t understand why:

my regex examples referred to the currentFile or basename as i gathered it’s not always John Doe being queried – i misunderstood

the dot+asterisk combo before and after would give you more context where the queried name or filename appears

just tips

1 Like

How about const pages = dv.pages('"daily" and [[JohnDoe]]'); as an answer for Q2

1 Like

Thanks a lot. What is left:

Q1: Is it correct that I cannot get and filter paragraphs of daily notes in DataView?

Q4: See Dataview list within a table has additional empty lines between each item

q1: according to posts on the forum and the official dataview documentation you can get to task and list items but not plain text, which you can get with dvjs’s dv.io.load – so if you have structured you dailies with indented lists like in the linked example, you can get at them with plain dataview

q4: i have a feeling you want the plain dv method because of the issue experienced with dvjs? then try extracting the text in a different way – i saw on the forum this done some way, where results were separated by html tags, so you can do html stuff with dvjs as well

1 Like

Thanks a lot, @Yurcee.

About q1: That is good to know. I experimented a bit and decided I need my solution to work on plain text, too. So I am sticking with dv.io.load.

About q4: Are you sure this is an issue with dvjs? The extracted text seems just fine, but the display within a table seems broken. When I found the root cause issue, I posted a bug report at Bug report: Dataview list within a table has additional empty lines between each item · Issue #2360 · blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview · GitHub, together with the question whether this is a problem of Dataview, dataviewjs, or the Obsidian markdown renderer. Do you know the answer?

surprisingly, it is quite fast as well…for big vaults i do multiple extractions for note syntax checks and it works well, although dataview does NOT index main body text content at startup

nossir, but i did hint at using <br> as you mentioned in your GH issue post

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