Please consider adding ancestor: element to facilitate simpler deeper searches

🌟Features
#1

First, since I am new here, let me say thank you to the developers -I am enjoying testing your very eloquent and smartly featured Dynalist for myself and my team.

I have found a number of workarounds for a number of problems/challenges; however, I hit a wall with this…

Is there a feature request thread for adding the “ancestor:” element/operator for searches?
I found this thread here in help by Fraser: Is there a way to find arbitrarily nested descendants of a given parent?
…and then a few other near-to-this things crop up in search here,
esp Bjarke_Ebert thread started back in 2017 that resulted in “parent:” operator being taken on
Find search terms in parent nodes as well

but …to the point…

Going next level on this (and thank you for your posts folks), it would be most liberating to be able to do the following (below), and considering modern html/css Dynalist appears to track-with, I would think it would be an easy implementation for Dynalist because the element exists and is ready/suited for code manipulation?

EXAMPLE (sorry, tabs or spaces or … did not allow formatting my list -so I am busy re-editing it until I figure it out. The opening numbers on each line represent indent-levels.
Primary Document Example
… • 1 Some List
… … … • 2 @ThisP @ThatP info #Here
… … … … … • 3 Some Stuff #Today
… … … … … • 3 Some More Stuff
… … … … … • 3Still More Stuff
… … … … … • 3 Still More Stuff #Now
… … … … … • 3 Funky Test
… … … … … … … • 4 Funky Chicken
… … … … … … … • 4 Funky Chicken2
… … … … … … … … … • 5 Smashing Chicken #Now

Search criteria:
parent:@ThisP #Now OR parent:@ThisP #Today
Unfortunate Result: …No Funky Chicken…
Primary Document Example
… • 1 Some List
… … … • 2 @ThisP @ThatP info #Here
… … … … … • 3 Some Stuff #Today
… … … … … • 3 Still More Stuff #Now

Desired Search criteria:
ancestor:@ThisP #Now OR ancestor:@ThisP #Today
Positive Result: …all the way down to the funky chicken…
Primary Document Example
… • 1 Some List
… … … • 2 @ThisP @ThatP info #Here
… … … … … • 3 Some Stuff #Today
… … … … … • 3 Still More Stuff #Now
… … … … … • 3 Funky Test
… … … … … … … • 4 Funky Chicken2
… … … … … … … … … • 5 Smashed Chicken #Now

Note: “1 Some List” could be a (pseudo)replicated nested list anywhere; we’re seeking to pull them all out wherever they are without having to dig and scratch for more search criteria where the content is unique (as “funky chicken” could be tasty meat, bizzare fish, crispy veggies, people, soilent green, etc).

Wouldn’t this be a fantastic addition to Dynalist? Does this have roadmap potential?

Thanks for your efforts.
Rick Twohawks

@admin: if I did this wrong, sorry, and please relocate my post and tell me what I missed, etc. Thanks very much.

4 Likes
Method For Auto-Expanding Search Results
How do you use search and tags to get around?
Inherit tags from ancestors
#2

I would also love to see an ancestor search term.

#3

Me too.

But likely the data for the ancestors is not easily dealt with from the node in question and might require traversing the tree upwards with a regex search. Doable in theory but possibly impractical because of the time required and the arbitrary number of ancestors (unless it was asynchronously executed, which may cause UI/UX issues ).

Just my very limited perspective, though. Dynalist is a very well implemented program and sometimes add-on functionality takes on a life of its own and the overall direction of the product can become cloudy.

#4

Thanks for chiming, Fraser. I understand the ‘life of its own’ comment, having been a coder, and I have seen it brought up in a few other discussions 'round here.

I figured, I have seen some requests related to this that are now a bit dated (or seemed a bit more out of bounds from a coding perspective), and perhaps there may be more practical potential for its consideration now. Seem to be a number of js and other code examples out there for webdevs, of course, don’t know the challenges back to front with this project (of course). Don’t know if you don’t ask ;^)

1 Like
#5

Indeed @HTHawks.

I can’t seem to stay in the user mindset and jump into hapless-coder mode at the drop of a hat!

#6

Constantly dealing with difficult users/clients helps motivate one to maintain sharp focus on both …unfortunately or fortunately -as the case may be ;^) My own userbase and clients are a tough bunch, i.e, refuse to pay any attention, so I am forced to constantly make ridiculously easy things easier for them ::sigh::.

2 Likes
#7

Sounds like you have great dedication and stamina. Still waiting for mine.

#8

Thanks for the feature request! More reason to implement ancestor:keyword indeed.

@Fraser_Gorrie: there could potentially be performance issues, especially if you do ancestor:commonWord without further keywords, but that’s to be expected I think. The slowness is also partially how long it takes to render tens of thousands of items.

Thanks for taking the time to explain the technical challenges though! Really appreciate it.

2 Likes
#9

Update: ancestor: is now available in the web app, coming to desktop/mobile soon.

Cheers!

3 Likes
#10

Wow !!

Bravo! What a nice surprise. Thank you!

Just tried it - works like a charm!

1 Like
#11

Excellent!

1 Like
#12

This is great! Thank you so much!

#13

Wow - tremendous. I will test later. Thank you SO Much!!
Update: this is so damn helpful, really! Thanks again Dev team.

1 Like
#14

Very good!
Can I bookmark that ancestor search?
On mobile or desktop

In this case I’m searching for a tag
I don’t see a way to bookmark it on mobile
.
Thanks again!

#15

Yes, you can bookmark this search like all other search results.

Cheers!

#16

I only use the web app on my mac.
Is there a brave extension?
Will you update us when the mobile app has this feature?
Thanks!

#17

The latest mobile app (1.4.1) has this search operator now.

1 Like