Export only one unique date in a collection of notes

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

I have a collection of Notes, each with a date ($ MyDate). I would like to export only one Unique date for all the notes that have the same date.

I think I need to compare the $MyDate of the PreviousSibling to the current note and only export the value of $MyDate if they are not the same. Is this the correct logic ? I do not know how to do this in TB.

Are there any videos that could help me understand this better, or if the problem requires a loop, understand the programming logic /syntax better?

In my main file, the notes are collected by an agent, but I assume the same theory applies.

Thanks.

conditional export.tbx (112.6 KB)

2

Done:

conditional export.tbx 2022-02-24 12-58-29
conditional export.tbx 2022-02-24 12-58-29606×1088 38.7 KB

I’ll upload my edited version for you file at the end of the post. But the main assumptions are as follow…

We will use a container or agent for export. In either case:

  • $Sort set for ‘MyDate’, reverse order
  • $SortAlso set for ‘Name’

So, all children/aliases sort in reverse ($MyDate) date order—i.e. most recent first—and in A–Z order within groups of notes with the same MyDate.

We need two new templates:

  • t_date-page. This is the ‘wrapper’ template used by the agent or container to generate the list. It transcludes each child using template…
  • t_date-item. Checks if current note is first sibling or has a different $MyDate to its previous sibling. If so, the formatted $MyDate is listed before the note’s data ($Name, etc.)

The code in the latter template looks like this (ignore the forum’s code-colouring which is getting confused here):

^if($SiblingOrder==1|($MyDate!=$MyDate(prevSibling)))^<h2>^value($MyDate.format("L"))^</h2>
^endIf^<h3>^title^</h3>
^text^

Note that sibling order is intrinsic so as long as the parent container/agent is sorted correct see above), the code works fine with original notes or aliases in an agent.

Also note that when using == or != with Date type data, the time portion of the Date/time data is ignored. To illustrate this I changed the time of day, but not the day in several notes (‘Bobcat’, ‘Lynx’). This is why the outline sort order may differ slightly from that expected. To sort ($Sort) only on day and not date-time of $MyDate you would need to store the date-time in another attribute, but re-setting the time portion of each to the same time.

I’ve added an agent to the TBX so you can see the same template working in either a container or an agent listing that container’s contents.

Here is the TBX: conditional export ed1.tbx (137.0 KB)

2 Likes
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Thank you for your help, Mark.

1 Like
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Mark, this is a nice solution. Would you mind if I did a video on this to explain it?

1 Like
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Not at all - I think that’s a lovely idea. I’m sure there’s more that can be pulled out of the scenario. I really just tested the ‘am I like my sibling?’ aspect and that it works for either a container or an agent.