A Few Feature Requests

Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 10:28 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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A Few Feature Requests

So, after having done this many times and having to do it again today, here's a couple that I would love to see incorporated into a future release. This is based around when you have to replace a device - in my case my Nest plugin got updated and the new plugin had a different plugin ID, so my old thermostats were invalid and EVERY automation that referenced the old thermostats had to be changed (I'm talking a LOT of stuff).

  • When a device becomes no longer valid for ANY reason, instead of deleting it and deleting the various action groups, schedules and control pages that reference it have those various referencing functions show a disabled state. When I removed the device I lost 25+ action groups, 10 or so control pages and a bunch of other things - fortunately I back up multiple times a day. I didn't even remove the device, I simply removed the plugin from my plugin folder for this chaos to ensue
  • Have a utility for these kinds of situations where you can globally reassign a device so I could say "replace all instances of XYZ thermostat with ABC thermostat" so I don't have to edit every control page/scedule/trigger/action group by hand using the "find dependencies" function
  • Search through the plugin data to see if the device is also referenced in any of those. The dependency finder only looks to the built-in functions, but my thermostat was also tied to a disturbing number of 3rd party plugins (mostly my own) that all went haywire when it disappeared. If this can be done AND the 2nd bullet of being able to reassign could also apply to plugin databases then WIN!
  • In generally the whole deleting things when a device is removed I would love to see go away, or at least take those devices and move them to a special "needs attention" area instead

Don't mistaken my suggestions as speaking poorly about Indigo because obviously I don't think that given how many plugins I've written :).

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:49 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

First, just uninstalling a plugin will NEVER delete a device in Indigo. Don't know what happened, but just deleting a plugin won't do it. When you delete a device, you should always get the warning dialog with dependencies (if there are any) and that list will allow you to jump directly to the dependency and edit it as necessary. (see below for a discussion of plugin object dependencies)

Second, when you want to replace a device, just change it in the device edit dialog. This isn't guaranteed to fully work since the new device type may not have the same states as the old one so anything using states that are now gone will need to be manually updated (there isn't really a good way to do that automatically. But, replacing a device by changing it's definition should never cause anything to get deleted automatically.

Finding some way for a plugin to "register" a dependency on another Indigo object that it doesn't own is on the todo list, but is a very non-trivial task which would touch a BUNCH of stuff and require all plugins that do so to explicitly do it. Bottom line: we will do this eventually, but it'll be up to the plugin developer to call the appropriate APIs (meaning that it won't be fool proof).

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:56 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

jay (support) wrote:
First, just uninstalling a plugin will NEVER delete a device in Indigo. Don't know what happened, but just deleting a plugin won't do it.


Yea, I didn't expect that either but it happened and it was a OH S**T moment :shock:

jay (support) wrote:
When you delete a device, you should always get the warning dialog with dependencies


Typically I do get this, but it would still be nice to sandbox these things instead of delete. I can't tell you how many dead devices I keep in Indigo just because I don't want to edit nor delete all the control pages or whatever they are attached to.

jay (support) wrote:
Second, when you want to replace a device, just change it in the device edit dialog.


That is exactly what I did at first and the Nest plugin blew up pretty bad, so I went the other direction instead.

jay (support) wrote:
Finding some way for a plugin to "register" a dependency on another Indigo object that it doesn't own is on the todo list, but is a very non-trivial task


I understand that totally. How about a simple reading of the plugin data stored in the folder structure to do a search for a device ID that may be going away? I.e., if "12345" exists in this file then ask the user if we can replace that (I would think it highly unlikely that the dev just happens to use the exact same random number as is given to new devices for some other data storage). It's a super low brow way to attack it, but it's one way.

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 12:14 pm
berkinet offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

jay wrote:
... ...but it'll be up to the plugin developer to call the appropriate APIs (meaning that it won't be fool proof).

What :?: Are you calling plugin developers fools? :wink:

Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 12:33 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

berkinet wrote:
jay wrote:
... ...but it'll be up to the plugin developer to call the appropriate APIs (meaning that it won't be fool proof).

What :?: Are you calling plugin developers fools? :wink:


No, just saying that it will take extra work while developing a plugin and extra work to retrofit it onto existing plugins. Work which some developers (and open source projects) may not do. (had to reply in case a newcomer just read your post without context)

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 12:48 pm
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

Well, like I said, Jay and Matt I think you guys wrote a solid product and I stand behind it, even when I get frustrated at something because it's just darn good work. These are just observations and suggestions and in no way indicate that I think that the lack of these things make me like Indigo less. If you are able to implement any of these ideas then I'm tickled, if not then I keep chugging along as I have done for the well over a decade that I've been running your software!

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:09 pm
berkinet offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

jay (support) wrote:
...(had to reply in case a newcomer just read your post without context)

Yeah. The forum needs a large sarcasm emoji

Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:46 pm
durosity offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

berkinet wrote:
Yeah. The forum needs a large sarcasm emoji


Just use my face for that!

Computer says no.

Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:52 pm
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

Sarcasm Emoji:

3872.jpg
HELLO, THIS ICON MEANS THIS IS A SARCASTIC COMMENT
3872.jpg (2.81 KiB) Viewed 2651 times

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:21 pm
durosity offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

Great post right there!


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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 4:42 pm
matt (support) offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

Colorado4Wheeler wrote:
Well, like I said, Jay and Matt I think you guys wrote a solid product and I stand behind it, even when I get frustrated at something because it's just darn good work. These are just observations and suggestions and in no way indicate that I think that the lack of these things make me like Indigo less. If you are able to implement any of these ideas then I'm tickled, if not then I keep chugging along as I have done for the well over a decade that I've been running your software!

Definitely keep the observations / suggestions (and complaints) coming. We've had on the list to improve the dependency checking of plugin created objects for a while, and the more we hear about the pain caused by not having it the more likely we'll dedicate the time to improving it.

I'm too am surprised that uninstalling a plugin caused problems though. It definitely won't automatically delete objects just when a plugin is uninstalled, but maybe the dependency checking isn't working correctly in some cases so no warning was shown (maybe a problem with devices that are disabled because their parent plugin isn't running).

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Posted on
Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:32 pm
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: A Few Feature Requests

No harm, no foul (or, given the big day ahead, no FOWL :D ). I'm a prolific backer-up-of-my-stuffer so I was safe, just a bit of a distraction for a while.

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