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The Doc Inspector

A deep dive into doc’s structure

Federico Stefanato

Last edited 147 days ago by Federico Stefanato.

What is it?

This document serves as a handy companion for exploring the details of any document... without needing to open it.

It displays the complete structural information through connected sync tables and provides a convenient, dynamically generated visual representation of the page structure and table relationships (data model).

Who is it for?

Well, it's for anyone curious to view a document from a different visual perspective.

However, the primary audience includes Power Makers, Doc Admins, and Coda Consultants who need a Swiss-knife-like tool to understand a document’s structure better and view its metrics at a glance.

How does it work?

There are four main pages:

⁠

My Docs⁠

: the starting point to add your docs and select the one to inspect

⁠

Pages⁠

: List of all the pages, with full details and their schema, along with some schema settings

⁠

Tables⁠

: List of all the tables and a db-like schema to show their structure

⁠

dbdiagram⁠

: an embedded online tool to better manage the table schema, using the generated syntax (this is working only for the tables schema, not the page one)

Also, in the background, this doc relies on two packs:

⁠

Doc Inspector⁠

: a pack that provides (connected) sync tables via the

Coda API⁠

⁠

Kroki⁠

: a handful pack to use

Kroki⁠

, a service that provides a unified way to use multiple diagram libraries. It's used for displaying tables and page structures.

A few explanatory videos are provided to help you better understand the main functionalities.

Good to know

It's important to note that, to optimize data loading, you can inspect one document at a time. While you'll always have the complete list of docs you've explored, you should select and load the data of the active doc you wish to inspect (more instructions in

My Docs⁠

Some ongoing, unfinished features are now hidden (but are still visible and accessible when you copy this document). Keep in mind that they can—and likely will—change in future updates.

This doc is ready to use. However, there are certainly bugs, issues, inconsistencies, and missing features. While I will keep an eye on it, please don’t expect regular maintenance, as I work on it in my spare time.

Feel free to evolve your copy at your convenience! 😉

Version:
`v1.7.0`
⁠
⁠

Release Notes

⁠

v1.7.0 - May 16, 2025 New pack release (13). Some refactorings, optimizations, and several bugfixes Introduces a few utility functions still under development. v1.6.2 - Feb 21, 2025 Restored a crucial variable wrongly deleted (f_SelectedDocId ) intended to properly load sync tables v1.6.1 - Jun 2, 2024 New doc-inspector pack ⁠ Release (10): handling a 501 error when calling API for certain controls (under investigation). Renamed base tables according to the latest Coda’s naming conventions best practices v1.6.0 - Feb 27, 2024 New doc-inspector pack ⁠ Release (9). Changed the identity column for sync tables which are now independent to the doc context (thank you https://coda.io/@matthew ⁠ to signal this). It’s now possible to sync multiple docs consistently v1.5.0 - Jan 30, 2024 Changed the Pages ⁠ diagram: it’s now based on BlockDiag (replacing PlantUML). Still a compromise, from a formal perspective, but it gives more flexibility and performance, especially for complex docs v1.4.0 - Jan 9, 2024 New Doc Inspector Pack release with new API page schema changes v1.3.1 - Jan 9, 2024 slider_CellMaxLength slider as a collaborative control (rather than personal). This is in order to avoit a potential error in diagram generation v1.3.0 - Jan 4, 2024 Added a list limit (optional) parameter to all sync tables. This way it’s possible to calibrate pagination, especially with huge documents (many pages and/or many tables). You might find it useful especially on t_Tables ⁠ sync v1.2.0 - Dec 21, 2023 Fixed uniqueId strategy for columns sync table Added the ability to exclude non-lookup fields on tables schema Changed syntax generation to avoid Coda errors while inserting values too large in cells Added hierarchy level filtering for pages schema generation Experimental: Added some base statistics on column values v1.1.0 - Dec 15, 2023 Added Is Hidden (and Is Inherently Hidden ) columns to Pages, allowing the ability to exclude hidden pages from diagrams v1.0.0 - Dec 8, 2023 Main read functionalities. Schema generation with basic customization

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Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.