Number of conversations by contact

[JJ]

Hello,

I have tiddlers tagged with "Person" for contacts. For each conversation, I created a new tiddler with the content of the conversation along with the field "contact", in which the Person is mentioned. The conversation tiddler is tagged "Conversation".

Now I'd like to create a table, which shows me the People I talked to with the amount of conversations I had with them. Sometimes, the conversation is with more than one person, so I write two names in the contact-field, like "PersonOne PersonTwo". I understood that separating those, I should use the enlist-operator.

I tried the following, but I cannot find out, what to write in the space marked with ????. If I try to enter one Persons name manually, the correct count shows up in all rows, as expected. Somehow, I need to reference the currentTiddler, but I don't know how.

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Many Thanks!

JJ

<table>

  <tr>

    <th>Person</th>

    <th>Conversation Count</th>

  </tr>

<$list filter="[tag[Person]sort[caption]]">

<tr>

  <td><$link to={{!!title}}>{{!!title}}</$link></td>

  <td>{{{ [tag[Conversation]contact[????]count[]] }}} </td>

</tr>

</$list>

</table>

[Soren Bjornstad]

Hi JJ,

On Wednesday, June 30, 2021 at 6:18:58 AM UTC-5 JJ wrote:

Now I'd like to create a table, which shows me the People I talked to with the amount of conversations I had with them. Sometimes, the conversation is with more than one person, so I write two names in the contact-field, like "PersonOne PersonTwo". I understood that separating those, I should use the enlist-operator.

I don't see you using the enlist operator in the snippet above? Anyway, I would use contains, not enlist – it's possible to do it with enlist, but makes things unnecessarily trickier.

 

I tried the following, but I cannot find out, what to write in the space marked with ????. If I try to enter one Persons name manually, the correct count shows up in all rows, as expected. Somehow, I need to reference the currentTiddler, but I don't know how.

You need to use a soft parameter with <> or {} instead of [], which fill in the value of a variable or field respectively. So your filter would look like:

[tag[Conversation]contains:contact<currentTiddler>]

Or equivalently:

[tag[Conversation]contains:contact{!!title}]

See Filters and Transclusions for more on this.

It's worth noting you can take advantage of the $count widget and some default parameters of $link to simplify all this:

<$list filter="[tag[Person]sort[caption]]">

<tr>

  <td><$link /></td>

  <td><$count filter="[tag[Conversation]contains:contact<currentTiddler>]"/></td>

</tr>

</$list>

(But did you really want the title to display for each person after you sorted by the caption? You might prefer:

<td><$link to={{!!title}}><$transclude field="caption">{{!!title}}</$transclude></$link></td>

...which will show the caption if it exists and the title otherwise, linking to the title in either case.)

[JJ]

Thank you so much for the solution and extensive explanation! It's working perfectly.

A follow up question: Would it be possible to sort the table by the column "Conversations" in descending order of number of conversations? I can imagine that it's hard with the current solution because TW renders the table line by line for each Person.

I also tried using TiddlyTables. Using the tbl-anything column with a custom column template 

<td>

<$count filter="[tag[Conversation]contains:contact<currentRecord>]"/>

</td> 

works the same as above solution and shows the correct number of conversations per contact.

I can click on the column header to sort it, but nothing happens. Also I tried changing the sort mode in the settings without luck. I guess the table is still being rendered line by line alphabetically by person because that is the initial filter expression.

Any ideas how to sort the column?

Thanks again!

JJ

[Eric Shulman]

On Wednesday, June 30, 2021 at 11:46:17 PM UTC-7 JJ wrote:

A follow up question: Would it be possible to sort the table by the column "Conversations" in descending order of number of conversations?

You can use the sortsub[] filter operator to sort the Person list, based on the number of Conversations that list that person.

Try this:

\define byCount() [<currentTiddler>listed[contact]tag[Conversation]!has[draft.of]count[]]

<table>

  <tr><th>Person</th><th>Conversation Count</th></tr>

   <$list filter="[tag[Person]!sortsub:integer<byCount>]">

      <tr><td><$link/></td><td><$text text={{{ [subfilter<byCount>] }}}/></td></tr>

   </$list>

</table>

 

Notes:

* The byCount() macro is needed because the sortsub parameter is itself a filter syntax that contains square brackets, and you can't "nest" the square brackets.

* I used <currentTiddler>listed[contact]tag[Conversation] ("find all tiddlers with the currentTiddler listed as a contact that are also tagged as Conversations") rather than tag[Conversation]contains:contact<currentTiddler> ("find all tiddlers tagged as Conversations that contain the currentTiddler in the contact field").  Although these filters may seem to be equivalent, they produce different results.  I have to admit that I'm not sure why... but the "listed" filter produces the correct results, while the "contains" filter doesn't.

* I added !has[draft.of] to the filter to exclude any tiddlers that are currently being edited

* I re-used the <byCount> filter in a $text widget to display the actual count value

enjoy,

-e

[JJ]

Thank you, Eric, it's working well!

Such an elegant solution, short text of code and a lot of things to study for me :-)