Maybe this is simple.
I’m using the Dataview plugin to help organize some of the content in my vault. I’m starting by working with just the files for my book project. I have it set up to sync back and forth between Ulysses and Obsidian since they both read .md files.
To start with, I’m tagging location, characters and the POV character for each chapter and then am setting the alias and character name for each character profile page. I’m trying to determine what additional fields to add that might help me make better connections between the characters, but that’s not the question I have
I have many characters listed and many locations listed and I want a list of all original values.
So for example, on one chapter I have this in the front matter:
---
location: EvanTide County Hospital
characters:
- Anne Jackson
- Simon Jackson
- Joseph Battiato
- Danny Battiato
POV: Anne
---
I’d like to be able to list all the locations cited throughout the project, and I’d like to list all the characters cited throughout the project.
The book project is in its own folder, so if I can limit the query to that folder it would be ideal but I don’t use front matter in the rest of my vault (yet) so it shouldn’t matter.
I have played with using the front matter and with list values, but I’m not positive how to simply list all the values assigned to each of those fields.
It’s probably simple, but I searched and watched some different videos, and read through most the help documentation and read a nice long thread on different Dataview implementations.
It’s very possible I missed this very simple thing.
Can anyone help me? I’d certainly appreciate it greatly!
I have a partial table set up with most the data I wanted, mostly based on the amazing @EleanorKonik 's comment that included information on how she set up views on her current book projects.
So I’ve edited the frontmatter a bit and am using this template now:
---
seriesName: The Sub Shop
bookName:
chapter:
location:
charactersIncluded:
-
charactersMentioned:
-
povCharacter:
---
For the query, I’ve used almost the same thing as Eleanor’s
table chapter, location, charactersIncluded, charactersMentioned
from ""
where (seriesName = "The Sub Shop") AND (chapter != "00") sort chapter asc
But I need to figure out how to exclude one listed page and I’d love to exclude chapters that don’t have an actual chapter listed (ie I’m still moving some content around). I still want to just have a list of all the values attached to a given field/variable.
If there is a specific note to exclude, the “where” clause should do that for you:
WHERE
file.name !="Title of Note"
For example, the following is a query about books.
```dataview
TABLE WITHOUT ID
author AS Author,
file.link AS Book
FROM "books"
WHERE
file.name !="books to read"
AND file.name != this.file.name
SORT
author ASC,
title ASC
```
The second “where” of “AND file.name != this.file.name” tells the query not to list the note that the query is in. It can be used to denote any file with any name that any query is in. Essentially it instructs dataview to ignore this actual note whatever its name is.
