ternary statement in DQL?

[psarras]

I am trying to fine the outlinks of people located in the current document and then iterate through them and list the tasks that mention any of them. This works well, if I have more than one people referenced

people:: [[person1]], [[person2]]

```dataview
Task
Where !completed and !contains(text, "#archived")
Where any(contains(text, map(filter(this.file.outlinks.people, (x) => x != null), (x) => map(x, (y) => replace(split(meta(y).path, "/")[length(split(meta(y).path, "/")) -1], ".md", "")))[0]))

This works well, if I have more than 1 person listed but not when I only have 1 person. A workaround is to add an invisible person, however this is not great!

I came to the conclusion that the problem is on the second `map`, which fails if you only have 1 item. I wanted to do a  quick check using a ternary statement (`x.length > 0 ? map(...) : x`). However, I guess this is not supported with DQL. Is there a better way to write this using DQL, or I need to go to dataviewjs?

[AB1908]

Does choice() help? You may also want to consider FLATTEN though I'm not sure if it works as well with TASK queries.

[psarras]

Thank you for this, I guess choice() was what I was looking for but missed it in the documentation. However, it seems like the DQL is evaluating both sides of the statement, throughing a syntax error when not a list.

=map(filter(this.file.outlinks.people, (x) => x != null), (x) => choice(x.length > 1, map(x, (y) => 0), 0))

[psarras]

I guess what would be helpful in this situation is something that can process either a list or an item. Maybe I am thinking it wrong but so far going DataviewJs seems the only way...

[AB1908]

I don't fully understand your use case sadly. Can you give us examples of metadata and some mock output? Perhaps then we can look at crafting a query. However, if you're comfortable with JS, I'd wholeheartedly recommend going that route instead since it'd be much easier to debug.

[psarras]

yeah it makes sense what you are saying. I might go to either trouble and update the thread, with js wip or a more refined example.