Best Way to Learn Programming for the SmartThings Legacy Platform (2017) [DEPRECATED]

[JDRoberts]

@Stevieic

Hey Everyone,

I am new to Smart Things, and I would really like to get involved as a developer. I have very minimal programming experience. Is the best way to learn Java first, and then learn Groovy? Or is it better to just jump right in to Groovy. I understand basic concepts like what a class is, what a variable is, etc.

I’m very excited to jump into this world, and look forward to any advice you guys can give =)

Welcome!

You can do either, but to be honest, you probably don’t need to do either one. SmartThings provides a very limited set of programming options, it’s not even a full groovy implementation. And you can’t upload your own libraries. So you can learn pretty much everything you would need to just from the official developer docs. Just click on the “developer documentation” link at the top right of the screen on the first page of this forum. ( go to the top of this page, and click on “community” and that should take you to the first page of the form. Then click on “developer documentation” at the top right.)

And if you’re primarily interested in the practical side, you may not need even that. Webcore is a very powerful rules engine created by the community and essentially acts as a scripting language for SmartThings. I would suggest you start out learning how to use that. People have done some pretty amazing stuff with it and there are lots of community members will be glad to help you. They even have their own forum. And it can do much more than the official features. By using webcore, you will learn a lot about what SmartThings can do and you will be able to create very complex rule sets, including web hooks to outside servers if that’s what you’re looking for.

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…

If you want to write your own device type handlers, see the following thread (this is a clickable link)

"Device Handler for Dummies"? Any suggestions for a newbie? [Groovy/Classic App Edition, 2017]

Hey guys! I have never done this but am interested in learning how to write/modify a device handler. I started getting my feet wet last year with a little bit of smartapp development so now it’s time to get more up on the device handler side of things. Where are your recommendations for me as far as things to read/watch that could help me start down this road? I am currently interested in the Zigbee, Zwave side of devices. I have looked at the SmartThings Documentation that is available in the IDE thus far. Thanks for any and all suggestions.

And if you want to find code examples for both smart apps and device type handlers, try the quick browse list in the community – created wiki common

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

Oh, and you probably already know this next bit, but just in case you want the intro FAQ on custom code, here it is:

[OBSOLETE] FAQ: An Overview of Using Custom Code in SmartThings (SmartThings Classic, Groovy Code)

The original FAQ information in this thread refers to the original smartthings architecture, which was in place through the end of 2022 and a little beyond. Custom code was written in the groovy programming language and ran in the smartthings cloud. As of May 2023, you can no longer add new Groovy DTH‘s or smartapps to your smartthings account. So if you came here because of a link in an old forum thread, or on another site, I’m afraid the Groovy information is no longer usable. All of this was replaced by a new architecture. Cloud to cloud integrations use the smartthings API. Hub connected devices, mostly Zigbee and zwave, now use “Edge Drivers,” written in the LUA programming language. Here’s the official announcement on those: The process for using a custom Edge Driver in the new …

Anyway, welcome again. As far as programming in general, I would recommend starting with Java because once you learn that, groovy will seem very easy. But if you master either java or groovy and you come to SmartThings, it will still be a little confusing because of all the limitations that SmartThings imposes. It’s not like buying a server where you can upload your own libraries. SmartThings is primarily a cloud-based system, and all custom code runs in the cloud under very strict constraints. So learning webcore will put you right in the heart of what you can do with SmartThings, rather than having to relearn a whole paradigm the way you do if you start from Java/groovy.