Add Buttons to a Dimmer

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@mwittig said in Add Buttons to a Dimmer:

The plugin can also be installed using npm by using “method 1” as described in https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/1114/updated-how-to-install-a-plugin-from-github-using-npm-or-git

I’m aware it can, but don’t like encouraging it. IMHO, if it’s not a real release, meaning ready for the prime-time, it should be used/tested by those willing to do a little extra.

@mwittig said in Add Buttons to a Dimmer:

The advantage of this method is the package can be simply updated later via pimatic frontend at later stage when the package will have been published. Using git directly will require removal of the installation directory from the file system.

II thought i disabled debug in my prod instance, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ll remove that. Apologies.

@amit-patel said in Add Buttons to a Dimmer:

I use a script to create new projects, and this folder gets copied over as part of the process, which works fine for me.

Well, fair enough, but when you need change or extend your helper code you need to apply the changes in multiple place or your code will proliferate.

I’m aware of lodash, but not generally not a fan, and especially not a fan when using for projects that require older node and coffee-script versions where I can’t shake the unused lodash modules from my dependency tree.

Lodash has grown constantly over the years. Note, you can use the lodash submodule packages if you just need a small fraction of the provided functionality. See https://knpw.rs/blog/using-lodash/ and https://www.npmjs.com/browse/keyword/lodash-modularized. Note, beyond pimatic plugins do not need to depend on lodash as lodash is “inherited” via pimatic env.

What I like about lodash:

• Documented
• Tested and Performance Tested (due to the nature of JS the obvious solution is not always the fastest
• Portable - which is more of an issue if you write frontend code

What I don’t like:

• It is a legacy of its own. Major releases have introduced breaking changes and it is a pain in the neck to update a large code base accordingly as we did for pimatic in the past
• Lodash started out as the better alternative to “underscore”, however, some of the newer parts are not excellent design which may be one of the reasons for the breaking changes in the past
• Some parts of lodash have become obsolete with newer versions of Node.js, but this isn’t well documented and portability is left to the developer. Developers will get deprecation warnings instead (reminds me of Java). In such cases I prefer using ES5 polyfill libraries.

@amit-patel said in Add Buttons to a Dimmer:

@mwittig Yes, this makes sense. Having gone through the front-end and core pimatic codebase, it’s probably doable, but I think would require a significant amount of work (and time). It seems though that the core front end code has not been updated in 2 years, and dynamic templating would have to live there, no?

Agree with your thoughts and, yes, the frontend code has not been changed much for two years despite cosmetic stuff and bug-fixing. Adding news features like dynamic templates is a significant amount of work. We also discussed a complete re-design using a different state-of-art framework, but we’re lacking resources right now. Note, there is an alternative frontend based on angular, but this has limited functionality and it is based on angular v1.5

I like your PoC DeviceConfigExtension! This could be a good starting for providing alternative UI templates for some device types.

@mwittig said in Add Buttons to a Dimmer:

I like your PoC DeviceConfigExtension! This could be a good starting for providing alternative UI templates for some device types.

Thank you! I thought so as well. However, relying on the other owners of the other plugins to implement the change seemed a bit optimistic.

Also, my pathological, perhaps even maniacal, need for efficiency lead me to conclude that this plugin might be a better way.

As an example, say I have a single device that uses a certain template, at a single location on a single page, but may want to display it using an alternate template. The extension option would work for that.

Now say I have that same device, but I want to display it differently on 2 different pages in different forms. The extension option wouldn’t allow me to do that, and I would have to recreate the core device to display the second. Using a plugin to mirror and leverage the original, with complete synchronicity, I can achieve that goal fairly efficiently, assuming the device provided by this plugin is more efficient than the original.

That said, I think having both is beneficial. But I’m not one to mess with the core pimatic codebase, alas I offer this.

@mwittig said in Add Buttons to a Dimmer:

Note, you can use the lodash submodule packages if you just need a small fraction of the provided functionality. See https://knpw.rs/blog/using-lodash/ and https://www.npmjs.com/browse/keyword/lodash-modularized. Note, beyond pimatic plugins do not need to depend on lodash as lodash is “inherited” via pimatic env.

I’m well aware. I didn’t want to say it, but I prefer the actual implementation (code) of the helpers I use over lodash. Some may be the same, but others may be (as I think, perhaps irrationally) implemented better.