Json tables

Feature requests
1

Use case or problem

Tables in markdown are messy, and sometimes hard to keep straight. JSON is cleaner and machine-readable and ubiquitous for storing data. Combining JSON’s structured data and Obsidian’s ability to render markdown, this combo is a winner.

Proposed solution

Following the pattern of Gitlab, allow rendering of json code blocks as tables using the syntax below.

{
	"a": "11",
	"b": "22",
	"c": "33"
}

renders as

a b c
11 22 33

See these two references:

  1. GitLab Flavored Markdown (GLFM) | GitLab
  2. Demo: JSON Tables in Markdown - YouTube

Current workaround (optional)

I mostly make tables from memory, but if it has been a while I will use an external resource like tablesgenerator.com, or tableconvert.com. I am sure there are addons that make tables easier, but it only eases the burden, it doesn’t fix the underlying problem that markdown isn’t well suited to holding data sets.

Related feature requests (optional)

NONE

2

have you tried using pandoc to convert from json to markdown_mmd

3

Aren’t you allowed to use JSON in the yaml? And wouldn’t this be writing/defining a dataviewjs query parsing that structure or part of it, and presenting it as a table?

Or are you wanting to start declaring JSON tables in normal text? This currently can’t be retrieved easily unless defined in a separate file and imported using dv.io.load or similar.

A final note is related to how it’s been said that much of the inline fields and/or metadata might be restructured in the near future, so this could potentially mean this would be easier when those changes have been implemented. Sadly, not a whole lot of details, nor time-lines has been communicated.