Explain the problem as you see it
I am unable to filter nodes based on the existence / type / contents of child nodes. The result is that I am unable to properly filter out information I do not need.
Why is this a problem for you?
I would like to search for meetings that contain notes. This could be done multiple ways depending on how meeting notes are taken:
- Search for
#meetingnodes that do not contain child nodes (fields excluded). - Search for
#meetingnodes that contain a specific#supertag - Search for
#meetingnodes that contain a node that is notDONE - Search for
#meetingnodes that contain the string "Notes"
None of these searches are possible today. As a result, it is unnecessary time consuming for me find specific meeting notes because I am forced to navigate through all of my #meeting nodes.
Suggest a solution
Ideally, this functionality would be made available using a new node contents operator like CONTAINS or HAS CHILD which accepts nothing, a tag, a string, etc. as a parameter. The query only has to match a single item while should address performance concerns.
If the above solution is not possible, there are a few other approaches that could work:
- If
on child createdandon child removedevents were available at the supertag level, a check could (presumably) be performed after each child was created/removed which could then set a field value for reference. - The system could offer new node content operators for specific queries like
HAS CHILDREN,HAS CHILD [TODO|DONE|NOT DONE],HAS CHILD TAG, etc.
This feels like basic functionality that I was surprised to find missing from Tana.
Thanks in advanced for your consideration.