fix(capture): end a detached table cell before writing by chhoumann · Pull Request #494 · chhoumann/PodNotes

chhoumann · 2026-10-15T12:33:13Z

Fixes #473

Why

You edit a Live Preview table cell, then switch to Source mode or open another note in the tab. Obsidian keeps the cell's editor, but its table is gone from the view. If the note then changes elsewhere, a capture made before you click into the note rewrites the table from the cell's old copy at its old place. A row loses text, and a changed heading can delete a whole row with the capture. The same leftover cell can also swallow an Undo.

What changed

Before a capture or its Undo writes, endDetachedTableCell ends a table cell whose element is no longer in the document. It calls Obsidian's destroyTableCell, which Obsidian also calls when the note's editor takes focus. The capture then goes to the note's caret, escaped as in Source mode.
A cell that is still in the document takes the capture as in fix(capture): persist repeated captures in Live Preview tables #471, also when its note is in a background tab. Undo still compares the whole note (feat(ui): add the v3 player with Chapters, Up next and capture Undo #466).

Scope

Covers captures and their Undo.
Leaves out Obsidian's caret after Back. If a change elsewhere adds lines above the caret while the tab shows another note, Back puts the caret on another line. A capture lands where typing would, which in a table can be the delimiter row. Master does the same for plain paragraphs, so it is a separate follow-up.

Tradeoffs

The brief asked the check to also require the cell to be on screen and its text to match the note. Attachment alone told stale cells from live ones in all 14 real-Obsidian scenarios I probed. A cell in a background tab is attached and hidden, and captures through it land correctly, so an on-screen check would close a live cell for nothing. A stale cell can still match the note's text at its old place when another row changed, so a text check trusts it and corrupts that row.
A fallback to the note's editor without ending the cell does not work. Obsidian hands a write inside the old cell's range to the stale cell, so the row is corrupted as on master.

Blast Radius

Only captures and Undos in a note whose tab holds a detached cell editor take the new path. If a future Obsidian drops destroyTableCell but keeps the cell, PodNotes keeps #471's behavior instead of throwing, and that can still corrupt the row. Obsidian 1.13.7 and 1.14.4 both have the method.

Verification

The three A capture can scramble a table row when a hidden cell editor is still attached #473 journeys (Source mode, Back, Undo after another note's cell) fail on master and pass here. All 15 table journeys pass on Obsidian 1.14.4 and 1.13.7.
Full npm run test:e2e on a fresh vault, Obsidian 1.14.4: 234 of 234 pass, run by an independent verifier on 88a05b3b. That commit has this change before a rebase onto two dependency bumps (build(deps-dev): bump the npm-development-minor-patch group with 4 updates #492, ci(deps): bump actions/setup-node from 7.0.0 to 7.1.0 in the github-actions group #493). The 15 table journeys pass again on the rebased head.
Node 22.23.2: lint, format:check, typecheck, build, test (2,760 tests), test:tooling (35), docs:build all pass. npm run size: 102,900 gzip bytes, +57 over master's 102,843, 100 under the budget.

Mutations (standing order 32), each an exact replacement in CaptureService.ts:

Mutant	Unit suite	Table journeys, Obsidian 1.14.4
No liveness check (master)	2 fail	3 fail: Source mode, Back, Undo after another note's cell
End the cell before a capture only, not before Undo	1 fails	1 fails: Undo after another note's cell
Fall back to the note's editor without ending the cell	3 fail	2 fail: Back, Undo after another note's cell
Trust a cell whose text matches the note, not attachment	2 fail, mock only	2 fail: Source mode, Back
Require on screen (`isShown`) instead of attachment	2 fail, mock only	1 fails: background tab
Call `destroyTableCell` without the function check	2 fail	15 pass, same as the fix while Obsidian has the method

"Mock only" means the unit failures come from the mock, which has neither API.

An attachment-only mutant is this fix.

Docs at release

None. The table-cell line in timestamps.md stays accurate.

Before, master after another row changed elsewhere and Back. The other row lost text:

After, the same steps on this branch:

Before, master after the heading changed elsewhere and Back. The table is gone:

After, the same steps on this branch:

Note

Medium Risk
Changes capture/Undo write paths for notes with stale table-cell state; scope is narrow but can alter where text lands and how Undo restores notes in those edge cases.

Overview
Fixes #473 by tearing down stale Live Preview table cell editors before PodNotes writes a capture or runs capture Undo.

CaptureService now calls endDetachedTableCell before choosing the cell writer or reverting in the note editor. When Obsidian still holds a cell whose DOM node is disconnected (e.g. after Source mode or switching notes in the tab), it invokes destroyTableCell so the timestamp goes to the current note caret instead of rewriting an obsolete table range. Connected cells—including background-tab cells—still capture through the cell editor as before; Undo uses the same cleanup so a leftover cell cannot swallow revert.

Tests and the editInTableCell mock were extended for detached cells, missing destroyTableCell, and real-Obsidian journeys (Source/Back, background tab, Undo after another note’s stale cell).

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit cf8716d. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

End detached table cells before capture writes and Undo restores

Fixes captures landing in stale table cells: CaptureService now calls a new endDetachedTableCell helper before selecting the writer, so a disconnected cell is destroyed and the capture reaches the current note editor (see CaptureService.ts).
The revertIn Undo helper ends a stale cell the same way before restoring the captured text.
The helper destroys a cell only when its container is disconnected and the editor component exposes a callable destruction method; connected cells are left unchanged.
Adds unit and end-to-end tests covering stale-cell capture, Undo, background-tab cells, and the fallback when destruction is unavailable (see table-cell-capture.test.ts).
Behavioral Change: captures that previously wrote into a detached cell's obsolete range now destroy that cell and write to the note editor instead; Undo restores the pre-capture note contents.

^{Macroscope summarized cf8716d.}

Obsidian keeps a Live Preview table cell after its table leaves the note's view, in Source mode or once the tab showed another note. A write through the note then reaches that cell at its old offsets. The journeys toggle Source mode or go Back after another note, change another row on disk, capture, and Undo. On master the other row loses text. A third journey captures, opens a note with a wide header cell in the same tab, edits that cell, goes Back, and clicks Undo. On master the Undo is lost. The unit cases model a cell no longer in the document, once for a capture and once for an Undo.

Source mode and opening another note in the tab replace the note's view without ending its Live Preview table cell. That cell keeps the table's old copy at its old place. A capture through it rewrote the table from that copy, and Obsidian handed the note editor's writes in the cell's old range to it, so a capture or an Undo could be lost or land in the wrong place. Before a capture or an Undo writes, a cell whose container is no longer in the document is ended with Obsidian's destroyTableCell, as Obsidian does when the note's editor takes focus. The capture then goes to the note's caret, escaped as in Source mode. A cell still in the document keeps taking captures, also in a background tab.

cloudflare-workers-and-pages · 2026-10-15T12:34:01Z

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chhoumann added 2 commits October 15, 2026 14:30

Merge branch 'master' into fix/stale-cell-capture

cf8716d

chhoumann merged commit 5e06442 into master Oct 15, 2026
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chhoumann deleted the fix/stale-cell-capture branch October 15, 2026 13:34

This was referenced Oct 15, 2026

Capture notice in a popout shows [object DocumentFragment] and no Undo button #498

Closed

Undo of a capture into an off-screen table cell moves the caret before the table #499

Closed

podnotes-release-bot Bot mentioned this pull request Oct 15, 2026

release(version): Release 2.22.0 #419

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This was referenced Oct 15, 2026

fix(capture): offer Undo in a focused popout and put the caret back on Undo #502

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docs: 2.22.0 release docs #458

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fix(capture): end a detached table cell before writing - #494

fix(capture): end a detached table cell before writing#494
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Why

What changed

Scope

Tradeoffs

Blast Radius

Verification

Docs at release

End detached table cells before capture writes and Undo restores

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chhoumann commented Oct 15, 2026 •

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