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Metadata on Tasks and Lists

Just like pages, you can also add fields on list item and task level to bind it to a specific task as context. For this you need to use the inline field syntax:

- [ ] Hello, this is some [metadata:: value]!
- [X] I finished this on [completion:: 2021-08-15].

Tasks and list items are the same data wise, so all your bullet points have all the information described here available, too.

Field Shorthands

The Tasks plugin introduced a different notation by using Emoji to configure the different dates related to a task. In the context of Dataview, this notation is called Field Shorthands. The current version of Dataview only support the dates shorthands as shown below. The priorities and recurrence shorthands are not supported.

  • Due this Saturday 🗓️2021-08-29
  • Completed last Saturday ✅2021-08-22
  • I made this on ➕1990-06-14
  • Task I can start this weekend 🛫2021-08-29
  • Task I finished ahead of schedule ⏳2021-08-29 ✅2021-08-22

There are two specifics to these emoji-shorthands. First, they omit the inline field syntax (no [🗓️:: YYYY-MM-DD] needed) and secondly, they map to a textual field name data-wise:

Field name Short hand syntax
due 🗓️YYYY-MM-DD
completion ✅YYYY-MM-DD
created ➕YYYY-MM-DD
start 🛫YYYY-MM-DD
scheduled ⏳YYYY-MM-DD

This means if you want to query for all tasks that are completed 2021-08-22, you'll write: 

```dataview
TASK
WHERE completion = date("2021-08-22")
```

Which will list both variants - shorthands and textual annotation:

- [x] Completed last Saturday ✅2021-08-22
- [x] Some Done Task [completion:: 2021-08-22]

Implicit Fields

As with pages, Dataview adds a number of implicit fields to each task or list item:

Inheritance of Fields

Tasks inherit all fields from their parent page - so if you have a rating field in your page, you can also access it on your task in a TASK Query.

Field name Data Type Description
status Text The completion status of this task, as determined by the character inside the [ ] brackets. Generally a space " " for incomplete tasks and an "x" for completed tasks, but allows for plugins which support alternative task statuses.
checked Boolean Whether or not this task's status is not empty, meaning it has some status character (which may or may not be "x") instead of a space in its [ ] brackets.
completed Boolean Whether or not this specific task has been completed; this does not consider the completion or non-completion of any child tasks. A task is explicitly considered "completed" if it has been marked with an "x". If you use a custom status, e.g. [-], checked will be true, whereas completed will be false.
fullyCompleted Boolean Whether or not this task and all of its subtasks are completed.
text Text The plain text of this task, including any metadata field annotations.
visual Text The text of this task, which is rendered by Dataview. This field can be overriden in DataviewJS to allow for different task text to be rendered than the regular task text, while still allowing the task to be checked (since Dataview validation logic normally checks the text against the text in-file).
line Number The line of the file this task shows up on.
lineCount Number The number of Markdown lines that this task takes up.
path Text The full path of the file this task is in. Equals to file.path for pages.
section Link Link to the section this task is contained in.
tags List Any tags inside the task text.
outlinks List Any links defined in this task.
link Link Link to the closest linkable block near this task; useful for making links which go to the task.
children List Any subtasks or sublists of this task.
task Boolean If true, this is a task; otherwise, it is a regular list element.
annotated Boolean True if the task text contains any metadata fields, false otherwise.
parent Number The line number of the task above this task, if present; will be null if this is a root-level task.
blockId Text The block ID of this task / list element, if one has been defined with the ^blockId syntax; otherwise null.

With usage of the shorthand syntax, following additional properties may be available:

  • completion: The date a task was completed.
  • due: The date a task is due, if it has one.
  • created: The date a task was created.
  • start: The date a task can be started.
  • scheduled: The date a task is scheduled to work on.

Accessing Implicit Fields in Queries

If you're using a TASK Query, your tasks are the top level information and can be used without any prefix:

```dataview
TASK
WHERE !fullyCompleted
```

For every other Query type, you first need to access the implicit field file.lists or file.tasks to check for these list item specific implicit fields:

```dataview
LIST
WHERE any(file.tasks, (t) => !t.fullyCompleted)
```

This will give you back all the file links that have unfinished tasks inside. We get back a list of tasks on page level and thus need to use a list function to look at each element.