Export Dataview as CSV

[ines.do]

Hi, I really need to export my dataview to excel. Is there a way to export as csv? I saw a question like this (below) but no replays.

Thanks for clues!

Continuing the discussion from Dataview - Exporting Table as CSV:

Things I have tried

What I’m trying to do

[epabarker]

Hi @ines.do, I was having a look at your post as well as Dataview - Exporting Table as CSV, and trying to look through Dataview documentation to see if this is something that is in the API.

There is mention of loading a csv, but I couldn’t see an option for saving.

I tried to come up with a general purpose route for:

Load relevant notes → grab relevant columns → export to csv

My rudimentary non-JS brain pieced together this:

// ----- Gather data and specify table columns -----
// Grab all relevant notes/pages
let projects = dv.pages("#projects");
// Grab the columns you want using .map function
const projects_tbl = projects.map(p => [p.file.link,p.status,p.domain]);
// Map function traverses each row and joins elements with ",", then we join the array of strings with "\n"
let csvContent = "data:text/csv;charset=utf-8," + projects_tbl.map(e => e.join(",")).join("\n");

// ------ Create CSV file ------
// Create a hidden <a> DOM node and set its download attribute as follows, where "my_data.csv" will be the name of your csv file
var encodedUri = encodeURI(csvContent);
var link = document.createElement("a");
link.setAttribute("href", encodedUri);
link.setAttribute("download","my_data.csv");
document.body.appendChild(link);
link.click();

I would use this at your discretion, as it uses some functions I am unaware of, but suffice to say I’ve tested this and I got a table just as I wanted, as a csv file. Once this code has run, it will automatically bring up a window to save the file, and bear in mind that this will keep running if you have set dataview queries to re-evaluate in Live-Preview. So, I would run it as a script perhaps?

Would love some extra suggestions from either yourself or others to improve upon this.

Generalisable version here:

// ----- Gather data and specify table columns -----
// Grab all relevant notes/pages
let <name_of_pages> = dv.pages("<source>");
// Grab the columns you want using .map function
const <table_name> = <name_of_pages>.map(p => [p.<field1>,p.<field2>,p.<field3>]);
// Map function traverses each row and joins elements with ",", then we join the array of strings with "\n"
let csvContent = "data:text/csv;charset=utf-8," + <table_name>.map(e => e.join(",")).join("\n");

// ------ Create CSV file ------
// Create a hidden <a> DOM node and set its download attribute as follows, where "my_data.csv" will be the name of your csv file
var encodedUri = encodeURI(csvContent);
var link = document.createElement("a");
link.setAttribute("href", encodedUri);
link.setAttribute("download","<csv_file_name>.csv");
document.body.appendChild(link);
link.click();

[Edmund]

I‘ve just found a perfect solution to solve this problem of CSV table export. With the new community plugin „Table to CSV Exporter“ from Stefan Wolfrum @metawops at
GitHub - metawops/obsidian-table-to-csv-export: An Obsidian Plugin that allows to export tables from a pane in reading mode to CSV files. It‘s all what you‘ll need. Here‘s my first test with three CSV exports to the top folder of my vault:

[metawops]

Thanks a lot, @Edmund!

You should definitely post some Zettelkasten analytics visualisations here, too! At least, this was one reason why I wrote that plugin: to be able to export metadata about the notes in our vaults and visualise them in tools like MS Power BI …

Oh, and in case somebody doesn’t see the exported CSV files in Obsidian’s File Explorer: make sure that the switch “Detect all file extensions” in the “Files & Links” section of the settings is switched on. (In case you want to see them in your File Explorer.)

[I-d-as]

I’m not so sure about CSV, but the new ability to render and manipulate Markdown from Dataview seems very promising!

Save embedded search query results into file

In the recent Dataview release, there includes: Functions which render to plain Markdown strings which you can then render or manipulate as desired. For example, you can utilize dv.markdownTable(headers, values) and dv.markdownList(values) and dv.markdownTaskList(tasks). It all seems pretty awesome!

Good luck!

[metawops]

@ines.do Can my table to CSV export plugin help in your case? Or would you need something different? Is there anything I could add to my plugin to include your use case?

[Franzis]

Hi, the “Table to CSV Exporter” has been very helpful for me, it’s great! Hower, I am using diacritics in my data, which aren’t displayed correctly after exporting the tables to csv. Is there a way to export them to csv utf-8? Maybe I should try out the code suggested by @epabarker above but using the plugin looks way easier.