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The Doc Inspector

A deep dive into doc’s structure
Federico Stefanato
Last edited 31 days ago by Federico Stefanato

What is it?

This document is a handy companion for exploring the details of any document... without opening it!
It shows you the full structural information through connected sync tables and also provides a convenient, dynamically generated visual of the page structure and table relationships (data model).

Who is it for?

Well, it's for anyone curious to look at a document from a different, visual perspective.
However, the main audience includes Power Makers, Doc Admins, and Coda Consultants who need a Swiss-knife-like tool to better understand a document’s structure and to have its metrics at a glance.

How does it work?

There are 4 main pages:
⁠
My Docs
⁠
: the starting point to add and 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
⁠
sa-base-table
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 pages 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 providing a unified way to use several diagram libraries. It's used for displaying tables and page structures.
A few explanatory videos are provided to better understand 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 full 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
⁠
).
There are some ongoing, unfinished features that are now hidden (but obviously visible and accessible when you copy this doc). 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 a cadenced maintenance as I work on it in my spare time.
Feel free to evolve your copy at your convenience! 😉

Version:
v1.6.0
⁠
⁠

Release Notes

⁠
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
all_Tables_ext
⁠
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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