Is it possible to only show the headings of the embeded markdown file?

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1

I’m writing a book. I want to have a living index file in which all headings in all chapter files are embeded.

I used the syntax like this ![[ chapter1.md]] ,![[ chapter2.md]]… ![[chatper9.md]]. However, all levels of text were displayed in reading mode. I wonder if there is a way to just show the headings (maybe from level 1 to level 4) of the chatper files. Therefore, I can get a living index of the Book in case the headings in chapter files are changed.

2

You could modify the dynamic table-of-contents script from here:

It will automatically give you links to all headings, which will let you click through to the section itself. Just do one of these for each .md file.

3

Thank you for your suggestion. It works only for a single file. However, I need to combine all the headings of many chapter files in one index file.

4

Yes, so like I said in my post - just do one for each file inside the single index page. Either multiple datablocks or update a single codeblock to point at multiple files like this:

```dataviewjs
const A_BUNCH_OF_FILES = ['File1.md', 'File2.md']

for (const eachFile of A_BUNCH_OF_FILES) {
  const page = dv.page(eachFile)
  if (!page) continue
  const startAtLevel = 2
  const content = await dv.io.load(page.file.path)
  const toc = content.match(new RegExp(`^#{${startAtLevel},} \\S.*`, 'mg'))
    .map(heading => {
      const [_, level, text] = heading.match(/^(#+) (.+)$/)
      const link = dv.current().file.path + '#' + text
      return '\t'.repeat(level.length - startAtLevel) + `1. [[${link}|${text}]]`
    })
  dv.header(2, 'Table of contents for ' + page.file.name)
  dv.paragraph(toc.join('\n'))
}
```
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5

Thank you. Another follow-up question. How to handle the path of ‘File1.md’ if it is not under the root path of my Obsidian vault? I tried a relative path (for example ‘./05-Writing/01-Coding/01-SAScoding/03-mdv/File1.md’ ), but it seems that it doesn’t work.

6

It doesn’t need to be in the root the way I wrote it - Dataview will find it with just the name of the note without path. It’s the same format you’d use in a normal internal link.

However rather than using the A_BUNCH_OF_FILES array the way I put it in the example code, you’d probably be better to just use a dv.pages query there to fetch all the chapter files in one go.

7

Thank you. I have no idea how to use dv.pages. I drop the “./” in the path, it works well now.

1 Like
8

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