Question: Failed to load timekeep: Failed to parse timekeep JSON

[scottrlarson]

I don't know if this a bug or if I screwed up the JSON somehow. I ran it through a validator and it said that "Multipule JSON root elements [Code 22, Structure 59]"

The JSON Validator Formatted Code:

{
   "entries":[
      {
         "name":"No Power Diagnostic",
         "startTime":"2025-08-13T17:00:44.000Z",
         "endTime":"2025-08-13T18:00:45.000Z",
         "subEntries":null
      },
      {
         "name":"Known Problem Research",
         "startTime":"2025-08-18T21:00:39.000Z",
         "endTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:41.000Z",
         "subEntries":null
      },
      {
         "name":"Lenovo Repair Support Inquiry",
         "startTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:00.000Z",
         "endTime":"2025-08-18T23:00:01.000Z",
         "subEntries":null
      }
   ]
}{
   "entries":[
      {
         "name":"No Power Diagnostic",
         "startTime":"2025-08-13T17:00:44.000Z",
         "endTime":"2025-08-13T18:00:45.000Z",
         "subEntries":null
      },
      {
         "name":"Known Problem Research",
         "startTime":"2025-08-18T21:00:39.000Z",
         "endTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:41.000Z",
         "subEntries":null
      },
      {
         "name":"Lenovo Repair Support Inquiry",
         "startTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:00.000Z",
         "endTime":"2025-08-18T23:00:01.000Z",
         "subEntries":null
      },
      {
         "name":"Return Repair Shipment Prep",
         "subEntries":[
            {
               "name":"Part 1",
               "startTime":"2025-08-22T18:30:36.000Z",
               "endTime":"2025-08-22T18:57:38.000Z",
               "subEntries":null
            },
            {
               "name":"Part 2",
               "startTime":"2025-08-22T18:57:57.562Z",
               "endTime":null,
               "subEntries":null
            }
         ],
         "startTime":null,
         "endTime":null
      }
   ]
}

The orginal JSON from my obsidan markdown file:

{"entries":[{"name":"No Power Diagnostic","startTime":"2025-08-13T17:00:44.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-13T18:00:45.000Z","subEntries":null},{"name":"Known Problem Research","startTime":"2025-08-18T21:00:39.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:41.000Z","subEntries":null},{"name":"Lenovo Repair Support Inquiry","startTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:00.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-18T23:00:01.000Z","subEntries":null}]}
{"entries":[{"name":"No Power Diagnostic","startTime":"2025-08-13T17:00:44.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-13T18:00:45.000Z","subEntries":null},{"name":"Known Problem Research","startTime":"2025-08-18T21:00:39.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:41.000Z","subEntries":null},{"name":"Lenovo Repair Support Inquiry","startTime":"2025-08-18T22:00:00.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-18T23:00:01.000Z","subEntries":null},{"name":"Return Repair Shipment Prep","subEntries":[{"name":"Part 1","startTime":"2025-08-22T18:30:36.000Z","endTime":"2025-08-22T18:57:38.000Z","subEntries":null},{"name":"Part 2","startTime":"2025-08-22T18:57:57.562Z","endTime":null,"subEntries":null}],"startTime":null,"endTime":null}]}

[jacobtread]

Hi Scott,

This one here is quite weird, it looks like something caused the data to be stored in there twice (First is some old data and the second is some new stuff from what I can see) so might have been a race condition or some other conflict that's happened

I sometimes get weird things happening some times with Obsidian where it thinks the files been written outside of Obsidian (Might just be a unique case with how I've been sharing my files) and that causes conflicts for me.

Can you tell me what happened leading up to this if you know? Or did it just happen out of the blue when you've come back to the note

As for fixing it temporarily I can see that the data is still valid there the second JSON object there looks valid still so just remove that first block of JSON and should go back to normal

[scottrlarson]

Hi Scott,

This one here is quite weird, it looks like something caused the data to be stored in there twice (First is some old data and the second is some new stuff from what I can see) so might have been a race condition or some other conflict that's happened

I sometimes get weird things happening some times with Obsidian where it thinks the files been written outside of Obsidian (Might just be a unique case with how I've been sharing my files) and that causes conflicts for me.

Can you tell me what happened leading up to this if you know? Or did it just happen out of the blue when you've come back to the note

As for fixing it temporarily I can see that the data is still valid there the second JSON object there looks valid still so just remove that first block of JSON and should go back to normal

Ohh, I see now. For some reason I didn't see the duplication. I didn't see it happen so I can be sure what happened. I came back to that one note and it was in error the next day for some reason. Technically I could have copy/pasted with realizing it.

I never have problems with timekeeper so it's probably user error. I'll keep an eye on it, if it happens again I'll get more info.

And thank you for creating such an awesome plug-in. I use it daily to keep trade of my time at work.

[jacobtread]

Hi Scott,
This one here is quite weird, it looks like something caused the data to be stored in there twice (First is some old data and the second is some new stuff from what I can see) so might have been a race condition or some other conflict that's happened
I sometimes get weird things happening some times with Obsidian where it thinks the files been written outside of Obsidian (Might just be a unique case with how I've been sharing my files) and that causes conflicts for me.
Can you tell me what happened leading up to this if you know? Or did it just happen out of the blue when you've come back to the note
As for fixing it temporarily I can see that the data is still valid there the second JSON object there looks valid still so just remove that first block of JSON and should go back to normal

Ohh, I see now. For some reason I didn't see the duplication. I didn't see it happen so I can be sure what happened. I came back to that one note and it was in error the next day for some reason. Technically I could have copy/pasted with realizing it.

I never have problems with timekeeper so it's probably user error. I'll keep an eye on it, if it happens again I'll get more info.

And thank you for creating such an awesome plug-in. I use it daily to keep trade of my time at work.

Lets hope it was just some bizzard occurance! I'll leave this issue open incase it happens again

[nstiurca]

Hi. I had a similar issue the other day with failing to parse the JSON. I think what happened in my case is Obsidian Sync did a bad job merging changes between my laptop and my phone. Essentially I started timing something on my laptop, a bit later started something else on my phone, then returned to my laptop to json parse errors.

@scottrlarson, are you by any chance using Sync as well, and were bouncing between devices when this happened?

@jacobtread How would you feel about storing the data in a multiline formatted way? It should help Sync deal with merges a bit better, I expect. Actually, it would also make the raw data much more readable to humans, which would be benefit for anyone that wants to manually edit the data, or look at it without the plugin. After all, one of the selling points of Obsidian is that it's built on top of regular, human friendly text files that should (mostly) be readable in any text viewer.

[jacobtread]

Yeah that sounds like a good idea @nstiurca could be something I make an option, I think my initial concerns for not formatting the data across multiple lines was if I recall it correctly it'd causing weird jump behavior with the page before the markdown rendering kicks in/when changes occured since under the hood its a code block and I think it also affects off screen rendering for determining the page scroll height (since off screen codeblocks aren't rendered) I might be incorrect on that last one though.

I might prototype that, not sure if it will help things as not too sure how Sync handles merging things might end up causing worse errors but only one way to find out

[scottrlarson]

I only use timekeep on my desktop as far as I know. But there is a chance I might have inadvertently started a time keep process on my phone. I do use obsidian sync.

…

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025, at 10:25 PM, Nicu Stiurca wrote: *nstiurca* left a comment (jacobtread/obsidian-timekeep#49) <#49 (comment)> Hi. I had a similar issue the other day with failing to parse the JSON. I think what happened in my case is Obsidian Sync did a bad job merging changes between my laptop and my phone. Essentially I started timing something on my laptop, a bit later started something else on my phone, then returned to my laptop to json parse errors. @scottrlarson <https://github.com/scottrlarson>, are you by any chance using Sync as well, and were bouncing between devices when this happened? @jacobtread <https://github.com/jacobtread> How would you feel about storing the data in a multiline formatted way? It should help Sync deal with merges a bit better, I expect. Actually, it would also make the raw data much more readable to humans, which would be benefit for anyone that wants to manually edit the data, or look at it without the plugin. After all, one of the selling points of Obsidian is that it's built on top of regular, human friendly text files that should (mostly) be readable in any text viewer. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#49 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AG4S6LKBFSGGNJV7RYUZDJ33VIH3VAVCNFSM6AAAAACE7ER72KVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTGNJQGAZDMNBWGE>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[jacobtread]

@nstiurca I gave formatting the JSON a try and unfortunately it looks like my concerns before about the problems with formatted JSON are worse than I thought. Turns out Obsidian doesn't actually render the codeblock util the end of it is visible which creates a rather undesirable UX problem on any reasonably sized timekeep because you are forced to scroll to the bottom and then get jumped back to the top.

[jacobtread]

Possible work around could be to support an alternative version like when you paste in files, store a link to a formatted JSON file inside the codeblock instead and have the timekeep JSON data stored in a separate file.

Might be a little complex and fragile to implement though, I envision that would make notes quite fragile especially if you do any reoganizing, would be easy to break that link but its still an option on the table.

[nstiurca]

@nstiurca I gave formatting the JSON a try and unfortunately it looks like my concerns before about the problems with formatted JSON are worse than I thought. Turns out Obsidian doesn't actually render the codeblock util the end of it is visible which creates a rather undesirable UX problem on any reasonably sized timekeep because you are forced to scroll to the bottom and then get jumped back to the top.

Oof that's pretty lame. I feel like that warrants a bug report with Obsidian themselves.

For our purposes, perhaps there's a viable middle ground where each entry is on a single line if it doesn't have subentries; otherwise it's a single line + 1 line per subentry. Eg,

{"entries": [
  {"name": "block 1", "startTime": "...", "endTime": "...", "subEntries": null},
  {"name": "block 2", "startTime": "...", "endTime": "...", "subEntries": [
    {"name": "block 2 sub 1", ...},
    {"name": "block 2 sub 2", ...}
    ]}
  ]
}

[scottrlarson]

@nstiurca I gave formatting the JSON a try and unfortunately it looks like my concerns before about the problems with formatted JSON are worse than I thought. Turns out Obsidian doesn't actually render the codeblock util the end of it is visible which creates a rather undesirable UX problem on any reasonably sized timekeep because you are forced to scroll to the bottom and then get jumped back to the top.

Thats an interesting behavior spot. I noticed that some of my dataviews don't render on the mobile until after I scroll to the bottom or after some set of time... I wonder if this is bug is related to my experience.

[scottrlarson]

@nstiurca I gave formatting the JSON a try and unfortunately it looks like my concerns before about the problems with formatted JSON are worse than I thought. Turns out Obsidian doesn't actually render the codeblock util the end of it is visible which creates a rather undesirable UX problem on any reasonably sized timekeep because you are forced to scroll to the bottom and then get jumped back to the top.

Oof that's pretty lame. I feel like that warrants a bug report with Obsidian themselves.

For our purposes, perhaps there's a viable middle ground where each entry is on a single line if it doesn't have subentries; otherwise it's a single line + 1 line per subentry. Eg,

{"entries": [
{"name": "block 1", "startTime": "...", "endTime": "...", "subEntries": null},
{"name": "block 2", "startTime": "...", "endTime": "...", "subEntries": [
{"name": "block 2 sub 1", ...},
{"name": "block 2 sub 2", ...}
]}
]
}

Thanks for looking into this. I would be great to have better formatting, but not at the expense of breaking the rendered output or UI scrolling bugs. I already have that with some notes with a lot of dataviews (Not timekeep ones) in them.

[4Source]

Pretty sure this is caused by Obsidian there is an open bug in the forum: Codeblock copy button not appearing every time for codeblocks containing large amounts of text