Output

The parser produces an array of timelines and associated metadata:

const mw = parse(`title: my timeline
now: my birthday`);

console.log(JSON.stringify(mw));

// { events: ... }

export interface Timeline {
  ranges: Range[];
  foldables: { [index: number]: Foldable };
  events: EventGroup;
  header: any;
  ids: IdedEvents;
  metadata: TimelineMetadata;
}

export interface TimelineMetadata {
  earliestTime: DateTimeIso;
  latestTime: DateTimeIso;
  startLineIndex: number;
  startStringIndex: number;
  endLineIndex: number;
  endStringIndex: number;
  maxDurationDays: number;
  preferredInterpolationFormat: string | undefined;
}

Events are kept in a tree structure. To facilitate traversing and dealing with nodes, you can use utility functions from the parser library:

import {
  iter,
  get,
  getLast,
  flat,
  flatMap,
  isEvent,
} from "@markwhen/parser";

const mw = parse(...)

// Use `iterate` to iterate through the tree
for (const { path, eventy } of iter(mw)) {
  // Here, path is the path to the event or event group
}

// Path in the tree.
const path = [3, 1, 0]
const specificNode = get(mw, path)

// The rightmost node of the tree
const lastInTree = getLast(mw)

// Groups and sections are flattened to return an array of events only
const eventsOnly = flat(mw)

const eventTitles = flatMap(mw, (event) => event.firstLine.datePart)

// Determine whether an eventy has an event as its value
const event = isEvent(mw)

Paths

Events and groups are often referred to by their paths in the tree, starting from the root, or top, of the tree.

For example, say we have the following markwhen document:

Path        Text
--------------------------------
[0]         2008: Entrance exam

[1]         group Education
[1, 0]      2009: Start school

[1, 1]      group Sophomore year
[1, 1, 0]   2010: Advanced classes
            endGroup

[1, 2]      2011: More classes
            endGroup

[2]         2012: New job

Since we are essentially dealing with arrays of arrays of arrays ad infinitum, we can refer to values by their indicies.

For example, going up the tree, 2010: Advanced classes is the first element (index 0) of the second element (index 1) of the second element (index 1) of the top level tree. Since we have a reference to the head of the tree, we can refer to that event by its path going down: [1, 1, 0].

That is, to get to 2010: Advanced classes from the root of the tree, we take the item at index 1, and then the item at index 1 of that array, and then the item at index 0 of that array.

Another view of the tree, viewing it as an actual array of arrays (in pseudocode):

markwhen =
["2008: Entrance exam",
  "group Education": [
    "2009: Start school",
    "group Sophomore year": [
      "2010: Advanced classes"
    ],
    "2011: More classes",
  ],
  "2012: New job"
]

If we were indexing into the array to get to the value of "2010: Advanced classes", we would say markwhen[1][1][0], therefore its path is [1, 1, 0].

An invalid path for this tree would be [0, 0], since the first element is not an array and therefore cannot be indexed into.

Output ​

Paths ​

Output

Paths