Error managment for plugins

[John Doe]

When an error occur (plugin side) and "continue task after error" is not selected, Tasker shows really not worth information both for the user and developer. I suggest to show instead %err and %errmsg to see what's going on, or at least in addition to the current info.

[joaomgcd]

Yes please :)

[John Doe]

Pent, any news about this point? It seems quite easy to implement. Just show the values in %err and %errmsg. Current error doesn't mean anything for users and developers.

[Pent]

It was implemented last version, the messages should be in the log. But they
are not going into the on-screen error report when testing, which I guess is
what you mean.

I didn't do that because it's not trivial (different threads, timing, code structure)
but I guess it looks a bit weird with a failing action but no reason why, so I spent
the time for next version.

All failing actions will have err code and message shown in task edit screen next version.

Pent

[John Doe]

Thank you very much, I'm sure it will help a lot developers and users to understand what's going on if an error occurs. Yes, I meant on-screen error, of course.

Another point IMHO to help the users would be a way to let the user select variables in the plugin. I already opened a thread sometimes ago and we are off-topic here. I know, it's probably not easy to implement, however I ask you to consider this point because writing variables by hand in a plugin is a not easy task sometimes :)

Thanks again.

[Pent]

Another point IMHO to help the users would be a way to let the user select variables in the plugin. I already opened a thread sometimes ago and we are off-topic here. I know, it's probably not easy to implement, however I ask you to consider this point because writing variables by hand in a plugin is a not easy task sometimes :)

As I recall, I was against this in the past due to privacy concerns. Users
often encode 'data' in their variable names e.g. 'michaels_birthday'.
If Tasker gets a request from another app, I have no way of knowing
that a user initiated the request rather than that the app is fishing.

Possibly that's not so bad.

But in any case, I have no time for this project, certainly in the next few
months, sorry.

Pent

[John Doe]

I'm sorry but I don't understand. Currently Tasker let the plugin knows several information using the variable replacement. So in this case it would be even worst because the plugin can know the variable contents. In addition the plugin can already know the variable name just because the user write it. So I can't see what can change from current situation actually.

[Crafty Apps Support]

> I'm sorry but I don't understand. Currently Tasker let the plugin
> knows several information using the variable replacement.

But the plugin currently has to know the name of a variable the user
has created in order to get its contents (or did I miss something ?)

Adding a mechanism to allow the plugin to get a list of variables names
would then allow it to scrape all the contents, as you say, which would
be even worse, now that you mention it!

> So in this case it would be even worst because the plugin can know the
> variable contents. In addition the plugin can already know the
> variable name

Yes, the plugin can know the name and contents of a variable which the
user has *chosen to share with it*.

Pent

[John Doe]

I already replied to these questions in the other thread in the past. The solution is quite simple: don't let the plugin know the variable list. Create an activity with dialog style, let the plugin call the activity with startActivityForResult(), let the **user** select the variable (if he wants), and return only this variable name as result. It's ***exactly*** what today happen, nothing more, nothing less, with the exception the user doesn't need to write the variable name by hand. It's reason why I said that I don't understand what is the problem. However I say this thing because I think Tasker is already user unfriendly from ui point of view, I would give to the users a small help.

[Pent]

>variable list. Create an activity with dialog style, let the plugin call the activity with startActivityForResult(), let the **user** select >the variable (if he wants), and return only this variable name as result. It's ***exactly*** what today happen, nothing more,

Bah, I had actually thought of this yesterday morning and forgotten it in the meantime, thanks for reviving :-)

Will write it down, but I'm still too busy to handle it for a while.

Pent

[John Doe]

Ok, no problem. It's not something we need tomorrow of course, but I'd like to see something like that in a future.

Thanks.