Filter by file title in description?

[FilSalustri]

I used to have task queries that included: description includes [[{{title}}]], and these worked.

What that clause did was find all tasks in all notes that contained the current note's title (without the .md suffix) as a link in the task's description.
Example: in note with filename XXX.md (i.e., title = XXX), I would like to list any task from any note that contains [[XXX]].

It appears that as of v4.7.0 of tasks, my original query doesn't work anymore.

I've done my best to read the doc, and I cannot find any relevant information on this.
I've found that {{title}} seems to be treated as an undefined property.

Is this a bug, or a change to the code?
If it's an intended change, how can I perform the search I need?

[claremacrae]

Hi, what previously expanded the title? It certainly wasn’t Tasks.

For future reference, the What’s New section at the top of the Introduction page in the docs always points to new features…

But the big thing in this release is Placeholders.
https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Scripting/Placeholders

I am not in front of a computer right now so can’t test it. But do have a look at the docs page, which links to the underlying library Tasks is using. It will likely explain how to escape the {{ characters.

Or, depending on what you mean by title, you might be able to simplify your query and use the new Placeholders facility directly.

Please do report back how you get on. Thanks.

[FilSalustri]

I was afraid of this: I copied that part of the query from some article on Medium without thinking about which part of Obsidian supported what. I'm thinking {{title}} may come from elsewhere.

I will research further when my 200+ students this semester let me come up for air, and report back.

[FilSalustri]

Ok, so {{title}} comes from the Templates core plug-in (see https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Templates#Template%20variables) and is supposed to expand to the title of the active note.

Is it possible that, in implementing Placeholders, you may have somehow stopped those variables from the core Templates plugin from being expanded?

More info coming ASAP.

[claremacrae]

This is all a bit non-specific and not in a place that I can track progress.

Also, I use Templater too and have variables with no problem so there is something specific about your set up.

If you would like me to investigate it, please read the following page thoroughly and make a bug report and attach a zip of a minimal vault set up with your workflow, and then give a detailed, numbered list of steps to reproduce the problem.
https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Support+and+Help/Report+a+Bug

[claremacrae]

Also, if you do go ahead and write up a bug report, please be more specific than 'doesn't work any more'... Like, include any error messages or console output.
And run explain if the search ran.

[claremacrae]

@FilSalustri If I understand your intention correctly, this is how you can now write your query using a pure Tasks filter, with needing to use Templater to embed some hard-coded test that won't update if the file gets renamed:

filter by function task.description.includes('[[{{query.file.filename}}]]'.replace('.md', ''))

[FilSalustri]

One small problem with that filter by function:

On my Mac, I can use a single quote as a legit filename character.
So when query.file.filename gets expanded, it introduces an extra ' which throws an error - and rightly so.

Is there a way to get query.file.filename to escape such characters?

[claremacrae]

If you don’t have any files with “ in the name, change the ‘ to “ in the filter.

[claremacrae]

You can also use a backtick ` as the quote character, which is less likely still to be used in file names.