DynoMark

Dynomark strives to be a markdown query language engine, similar to obsidian's Dataview plugin.

This program can be used with editors like neovim, vscode and emacs to provide a similar experience to Dataview (but very barebones for now).

Installation

You can download the executables here:

Or if you want to build it yourself:

Requirements:

Go (1.22.5)

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/k-lar/dynomark
cd dynomark/

# Compile the program
make

# Install the program
sudo make install

# If you want to uninstall the program
sudo make uninstall

Note

For MacOS users:
If you want to install the program to /usr/local/bin/ like brew does, you have to set the PREFIX variable to /usr/local like so:

sudo make PREFIX=/usr/local install

And to uninstall:

sudo make PREFIX=/usr/local uninstall

Note

For Windows users:
The simplest way for you to compile the program is to use the go build command:

go build -o dynomark.exe

And then you can run the program with .\dynomark.exe. If you want dynomark to be available as a command in your terminal, you have to add dynomark.exe to your PATH environment variable.

Roadmap

Examples

Here's an example markdown document:

# Test Markdown File

This is a test markdown file to test the Dynomark parser.

## Tasks

- [ ] Implement DynoMark parser
- [x] Create test markdown file
- [ ] Write unit tests
- [x] Design CLI interface

## Lists

### Unordered List

- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3 that's
  like really
  really
  really
  long
- Item 4

### Ordered List

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item that's
   kinda
   sorta
   long-ish
4. Fourth item

## Code

Here's a sample code block:

```go
func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello, DynoMark!")
}
```

Here are some queries and their results:

List of files in the examples/ directory:
Query: LIST FROM "examples/"

Result:

- movie_reviews.md
- tasks.md
- test.md

Paragraphs from the examples/movie_reviews.md and examples/tasks.md files:
Query: PARAGRAPH FROM examples/movie_reviews.md, examples/tasks.md

Result:

Some movie review stuff here.

This is a test markdown file to test the Dynomark parser.

List of tasks in the examples/test.md file:
Query: TASK FROM "examples/test.md" WHERE NOT CHECKED

Result:

- [ ] Implement DynoMark parser
- [ ] Write unit tests

List of unchecked tasks in all .md files inside todos/ directory, grouped by file path:
Query: TASK FROM todos/ WHERE NOT CHECKED GROUP BY [file.path]

Result:

- todos/todo-1.md
    - [ ] Task 1
    - [ ] Task 3

- todos/todo-2.md
    - [ ] Item 1

- todos/todo-3.md
    - [ ] Other task 1
    - [ ] Other task 2

List of tasks in all .md files inside todos/ directory, grouped by file name (max 2 groups with max 3 results under each group):
Query: TASK FROM todos/ GROUP BY 2 [file.path] LIMIT 3

Result:

- todo-1.md
    - [ ] Task 1
    - [X] Task 2
    - [ ] Task 3

- todo-2.md
    - [ ] Item 1
    - [X] Item 2
    - [X] Item 3

All unordered lists in examples/test.md:
Query: UNORDEREDLIST FROM "examples/test.md"

Result:

- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3 that's
  like really
  really
  really
  long
- Item 4

All unordered list items in examples/test.md where the list contains the word "really":
Query: UNORDEREDLIST FROM "examples/test.md" WHERE CONTAINS "really"

Result:

- Item 3 that's
  like really
  really
  really
  long

All ordered list items in examples/test.md where the list contains the word "kinda":
Query: ORDEREDLIST FROM "examples/test.md" WHERE CONTAINS "kinda"

Result:

3. Third item that's
   kinda
   sorta
   long-ish

All tasks in examples/test.md but limit the results to the first 2:
Query: TASK FROM "examples/test.md" LIMIT 2

Result:

- [ ] Implement DynoMark parser
- [x] Create test markdown file

All tasks in examples/test.md where the tasks contains either the word "unit" or "CLI":
Query: TASK FROM "examples/test.md" WHERE CONTAINS "CLI" OR CONTAINS "unit"

Result:

- [ ] Write unit tests
- [x] Design CLI interface

All tasks in examples/test.md where the tasks contains either the word "unit" or "CLI" and the task is not checked:
Query: TASK FROM "examples/test.md" WHERE CONTAINS "CLI" OR CONTAINS "unit" AND NOT CHECKED

Result:

- [ ] Write unit tests

All fenced code blocks in examples/test.md: Query: FENCEDCODE FROM "examples/test.md"

Result:

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello, DynoMark!")
}

Sorting

As of version 0.2.0 dynomark supports sorting table results by metadata fields and sorting regular queries alphabetically (ascending and descending).

All tasks in examples/test.md sorted by their checked status in ascending order: Query: TASK FROM "examples/test.md" WHERE NOT CHECKED SORT ASC

Result:

- [ ] Implement DynoMark parser
- [ ] Implement DynoMark parser but better
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 3
- [ ] Task 6
- [ ] Task 7
- [ ] Test 1
- [ ] Write unit tests

Metadata support

Dynomark supports metadata in the form of key-value pairs. For now, you can use the dataview syntax to add metadata to your markdown files. Currently only the standard metadata syntax is supported and not the alternative "hidden" syntax (maybe in the future). To reference metadata in your queries, you have to use the following syntax: [metadata_key]

The only place where that syntax is not required is in the TABLE query, where you can use the metadata key directly as shown in the examples below.

There are 10 metadata fields that are defined by default for every file it processes:

file.path: The relative path to the file
file.name: The name of the file, including the file extension
file.shortname: The name of the file without the file extension
file.folder: The folder of the file where it's located
file.link: The markdown link to the file (relative to your current working directory)
file.size: The size of the file in bytes
file.cday: The creation day of the file in ISO8601 format
file.mday: The modification day of the file in ISO8601 format
file.ctime: The creation time of the file in ISO8601 format
file.mtime: The modification time of the file in ISO8601 format

NOTE:
IS is a strict version of the CONTAINS statement, it will only match if the metadata value is exactly the same as the argument after IS. It can also be used with normal queries where CONTAINS doesn't cut it, but that's rare because you would have to know the exact value of the result you're looking for.

You can use metadata in your queries like so:

PARAGRAPH FROM "examples/" WHERE [author] IS "Shakespeare"

This will return all paragraphs from all .md files from examples/ where the metadata key author is Shakespeare.

Tables

Dynomark supports querying metadata from files in a table format.

Here's an example query that queries all files in the todos/ directory by their creation date and their title: TABLE file.cday AS "Date created", title AS "Title" FROM todos/

That would return a table like this:

| File      | Date created | Title   |
|-----------|--------------|---------|
| todo-1.md | 2024-08-17   | Title 1 |
| todo-2.md | 2024-08-18   | Title 2 |
| todo-3.md | 2024-08-19   | Title 3 |
| todo-4.md | 2024-08-20   | Title 4 |
| todo-5.md | 2024-08-21   | Title 5 |

You can also use the TABLE NO ID statement to create a table without the ID/File column:
TABLE NO ID file.cday AS "Date created", title AS "Title" FROM todos/

That would return a table like this:

| Date created | Title   |
|--------------|---------|
| 2024-08-17   | Title 1 |
| 2024-08-18   | Title 2 |
| 2024-08-19   | Title 3 |
| 2024-08-20   | Title 4 |
| 2024-08-21   | Title 5 |

And an example with metadata conditionals:
TABLE NO ID file.cday AS "Date created", title AS "Title" FROM todos/ WHERE [title] IS "Title 2"

That would return a table like this:

| Date created | Title   |
|--------------|---------|
| 2024-08-18   | Title 2 |

The AS statement is optional. If you don't provide an alias, the metadata key will be used as the column name.

Sorting is also supported in tables. You can sort by any present metadata key in either ascending or descending order.

We'll take a previous example and sort it by the title in descending order: TABLE NO ID file.cday AS "Date created", title AS "Title" FROM todos/ SORT [title] DESC

That would return a table like this:

| Date created | Title   |
|--------------|---------|
| 2024-08-21   | Title 5 |
| 2024-08-20   | Title 4 |
| 2024-08-19   | Title 3 |
| 2024-08-18   | Title 2 |
| 2024-08-17   | Title 1 |

If you want to sort by multiple columns, you can do so by separating the columns with a comma:

TABLE NO ID file.cday AS "Date created", title AS "Title" FROM todos/ SORT [title] ASC, [file.cday] DESC

Deprecation

Warning

Before TABLE NO ID, there was TABLE_NO_ID that is now DEPRECATED. A warning will be shown if you try using TABLE_NO_ID but it will still show the results. This syntax will be removed at a later date, so please update your queries until then!**