Include Tasks Before Date Of Note

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae I have created this discussion per your request in #1082

I currently have templates for my daily, weekly, monthly and annual notes. I generate them through the command palette (or keyboard shortcut) using the Periodic Notes plugin which uses my template files which I will outline the relevant pieces my daily and weekly template below for reference. What I need to figure out is how to do similar date comparisons using the tasks plugin

The reason I would like to make the move is so that I can have the added features offered by the tasks plugin such as created, completed dates etc. Please let me know if you need me to provide you with any more data/information.

What I am trying to accomplish.

In my daily template I want to see a list of incomplete tasks, these could be tasks from any time in the past without a time limit. The files generated for daily notes have the filename format of 2024-03-22, etc. However, the daily template should not show any tasks created after the date of the note. This is why I was unable to use the suggestion of path does not include {{query.file.path}}, if I was looking at 2024-03-12 it was showing incomplete tasks that were created on future dates. I did try to use the below date comparisons in the tasks block but it did not like the syntax. The below data view blocks do in-fact work for my templates, the problem I run into is if there was a task created 4 days ago and I check it from the Incomplete tasks list on todays note it does not get the completed date. I have to manually go to the date where the task was created and check it there to make it get a completed date.

My Daily Template

## Incomplete Tasks
```dataview
TASK
FROM "Journal/Daily"
WHERE !completed
AND dateformat(file.ctime, "yyyy-MM-dd") < dateformat(this.file.day, "yyyy-MM-dd")
SORT file.day
```
---
# What Did You Work On Today? 


## Tasks 
 * [ ] Some Task
 * [ x ] Another Task

In my weekly template I would like to see a list of all tasks that are not complete that were created before the weekly template was created. These templates create files with the names such as 2024-W10 and 2024-W11. For this case as well I would not want to see unfinished tasks that were created after the weekly note was created.

When it comes to trhe completed tasks it should only show tasks that were completed during that week, including the day the weekly note was generated.

My Weekly Template

## Incomplete Tasks
```dataview
TASK
FROM "Journal/Daily"
WHERE !completed
AND file.day.year <= number(substring(string(this.file.name), 0, 4))
AND file.day.weekyear <= number(substring(string(this.file.name), 6, 8))
SORT file.day
```
---

## Completed Tasks
```dataview
TASK
FROM "Journal/Daily"
WHERE completed
AND file.day.year = number(substring(string(this.file.name), 0, 4))
AND file.day.weekyear = number(substring(string(this.file.name), 6, 8))
SORT file.day
```

[claremacrae]

Hi @josephcrawfordSRH - many thanks for the extra info.

I've tried to find the questions, but may have missed some.

Daily Notes

Since you use the Periodic Notes plugin, you can base your daily note content on the 'Example Daily Agenda template' given in this page of the Tasks docs:

Daily Agenda - Tasks User Guide - Obsidian Publish

However, the daily template should not show any tasks created after the date of the note

Something like this should work - where the Periodic Notes plugin expands the text in {{}}:

NOT (created after {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}})

You could also try this - where the Tasks plugin interprets the text between {{}} - so you will need to figure out how to prevent Periodic Notes from trying to expand it:

NOT (created after {{query.file.filenameWithoutExtension}})

Where Tasks would expand query.file.filenameWithoutExtension to 2024-03-12, for example.

Dataview

the problem I run into is if there was a task created 4 days ago and I check it from the Incomplete tasks list on todays note it does not get the completed date

You can make dataview add a Tasks-style completion date (the only limitation is it does not understand recurring tasks.) See these docs:

Dataview - Tasks User Guide - Obsidian Publish

Weekly Notes

I don't understand this fully, for example, how exactly is the search supposed to know the day the note was created:

including the day the weekly note was generated.

But I hope that the following might help:

Tasks supports Searching date ranges and it also supports Numbered date ranges

If you can read the whole 'Searching date ranges' section carefully, you will get a good understanding.

So you can use query.file.filenameWithoutExtension to expand to 2024-W10, for example - which Tasks understands as a date range.

For this case as well I would not want to see unfinished tasks that were created after the weekly note was created.

There are too many negatives in that for me to parse it in a reasonable amount of time, so here is an example for you to experiment with:

```tasks
created in {{query.file.filenameWithoutExtension}}
group by created
limit groups 1
explain
```

In a file called 2024-W10.md, this generates the following explanation with Tasks 6.2.0

  created in {{query.file.filenameWithoutExtension}} =>
  created in 2024-W10 =>
    created date is between:
      2024-03-04 (Monday 4th March 2024) and
      2024-03-10 (Sunday 10th March 2024) inclusive

IMPORTANT: For all your queries, please be sure to use the 'explain' query to carefully confirm your understanding of the date queries.

What next?

Good luck - I hope that helps.

If you have any more questions, please try to format them so that they are easy to spot - perhaps with questions in bold - or at least, separate from descriptive paragraphs. Thanks.

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae Thanks for the info and sorry for the late reply, everything is working properly. I was having issues until I found that some of my tasks were lacking a created date hence why they were not being found.

[claremacrae]

Thank you for the update.

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae I was generating my monthly note today and came up with an issue in the queries that I generated prior.

```tasks
not done
created in or before {{query.file.filenameWithoutExtension}}
```

The filename is 2024-M03, does the tasks plugin not recognize this as a date format for the searching?

[claremacrae]

Yes, using limit.

[claremacrae]

I was able to complete 90 tasks and have 10 tasks that were incomplete.

But you then would need 2 different tasks code blocks in order to see those those two different numbers.

[josephcrawfordSRH]

yes I have two queries as it is and I understand how limiting works, what I am trying to do is to access those number outside of the query so that in text at the top of my note I can have a sentence generated to display like I showed above. Using limit in the query will limit the results and show the say 10 of 32 tasks at the bottom of my list but I am unsure how (or if I can) to access this number for use eleeewhere in my template.

[claremacrae]

but I am unsure how (or if I can) to access this number for use eleeewhere in my template.

No it's not possible. You can upvote #2459.

[josephcrawfordSRH]

Thank You!

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae I have found that I am able to use dataview to query for a count of items in a bullet list, are you sure there is not a way to query the list of tasks for a count using dataview? This is what I have done for my Code Reviews and Meetings.

```dataviewjs 
let crResult = await dv.query('LIST length(rows) FROM "Journal/Daily" WHERE file.day FLATTEN dateformat(file.day, "YYYY-MM") as fileMonth FLATTEN file.lists as item WHERE meta(item.section).subpath = "Code Reviews" GROUP BY fileMonth');

const codeReviews = crResult.value.values[0].value;

let mResult = await dv.query('LIST length(rows) FROM "Journal/Daily" WHERE file.day FLATTEN dateformat(file.day, "YYYY-MM") as fileMonth FLATTEN file.lists as item WHERE meta(item.section).subpath = "Meetings" GROUP BY fileMonth');

const meetings = mResult.value.values[0].value;

dv.paragraph('<br>I have completed  **' + codeReviews + '** code reviews and attended **' + meetings + '** meetings this month!'); 

```

[claremacrae]

are you sure there is not a way to query the list of tasks for a count using dataview?

Oh @josephcrawfordSRH, have a heart please...

This repo is for the Tasks plugin, and I spend many hours a week voluntarily helping users of the Tasks plugin, including a not insignificant amount of time on this ticket.

To start asking plugin authors to also offer their time to do user-support on other plugins as well is just not on!

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae I am not asking for you to support data-view itself, I was asking if there was not an integration as on your documentation I saw it listed here: https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Other+Plugins/Dataview

My apologies if you think I was being rude and asking you to support a plugin that is not yours.