Tell me your IDE issues

As some of you already know, I recently became an employee of SmartThings. My job is to improve the IDE. Since I started as a community developer, I have my own list of issues that I’m hoping to improve. I would also like to hear from you about the problems you run into.

If you can split individual issues into separate posts, that would be ideal. If you agree with something someone else has posted, hit the heart icon. That will help me see which issues affect the most people.

I can’t promise to fix everything you tell us for reasons that are familiar to devs everywhere (time involved, priorities, etc). But I will address everything I can.


Issues from this topic

  1. Console Logging
  2. Sortable tables
  • Coming Soon
  1. Consistent wording (Device Type, Device Handler, SmartDevice)
  2. Link from device to logging
  3. Download all logs
  4. Improve session handling
  • Available Now: If save fails, you’ll be informed. Your code will be cached (in localStorage) and you’ll be prompted to use it after you login again. There are other session improvements as well, but the code part is the most obvious.
  1. Virtual devices don’t mirror real world device functions
  2. Simulator dies. Make it easy to restart.
  3. Simulator doesn’t have device type preferences
  4. Auto indentation
  5. Find and replace. Browser search is broken.
  • Available Now: Find in code will work. I don’t think we have replace yet. We’re also working on improving how search works.
  1. Color coding for comments
  • Available Now This should go along with general highlighting improvements
  1. View device events from simulator
  2. Change layout of virtual devices
  3. Simulator should mirror mobile apps
  • Work in Progress: This will be an area with ongoing improvement as we catch up to all the new options.
  1. Link line number in error to line in code
  2. Global find/replace
  3. Show number of devices using custom type
  4. Accurate line number in errors
  5. Install SmartApp via IDE
  6. Open SmartApp details in new window instead of modal
  7. Make code samples searchable
  8. Includes
  9. Save As (full filesystem?)
  10. Autocomplete
  11. Infinite Undo
  12. Code Folding
  • Coming Soon
  1. Support powerMeter in simluator
  2. Breakpoints/Debugging
  3. Timezone consistency
  • Work in progress: These should start getting better.
  1. Zwave mesh map
  2. Zwave repair status shows up under hue/sonos in live logging
  3. Zwave repair downloads json file
  4. Make IDE prettier
  5. Make simulator collapsible
  6. Choose which device to emulate
  7. Select multiple apps/devices in live logging
  8. Allow unpublishing an app
  9. A way of visually grouping parent and child apps as well as device types
18 Likes

Console logging… it needs to work everytime.

This is something we know about and there are a couple of improvements coming. I don’t think it will be fully fixed yet.

10 Likes

This is simple, but it would really be helpful to get consistent use of terms. “Device Type,” “Device Handler,” and “SmartDevice” are used interchangeably and apparently randomly.

“+SmartDevice” is particularly problematic because you’re actually adding a new device handler there, not a new device.

4 Likes

Also, I’d really like to be able to click on the value in Last Activity on the Devices page and go straight to the logging for that device.

3 Likes

On the Devices page, I’d like to be able to sort by both Display Name and Device Network ID.

1 Like

I would like to know how to interpret the device status on the “My Devices” tab. Is it even a useful value?

1 Like

On the My Smartapps page I’d like to be able to sort by Name.

5 Likes

I’d like to be able to flip the sort sequence on request for all timestamp entries, so I can choose between newest first and oldest first.

1 Like

I’d like to be able to download all logs.

10 Likes

On the Hub page, I’d like both List Events and Utilities to be called out in the top bar navigation. (These are really hard to get to with a speech reader.)

1 Like

I find myself being frustrated by session timeout.
When my session times out and I click “Save” on my smart app, it doesn’t report an error it just hides the loading gif and I assume my changes were saved when they really were not.

11 Likes

If you hit an OAuth endpoint in the browser with which you’re currently logged in to the IDE, you lose your IDE login session.

Also, congrats!

6 Likes

I want to be able to sort the My Devices page by Display Name and/or Type

6 Likes

Virtual Devices do not mirror real world device type functionality. It’s like they are written a long time ago and don’t have any updated functionality.

6 Likes

Simulator will die, and need to reload page to jump start it. Would be nice to be able to click a button to restart simulator.

6 Likes

IDE / simulator doesn’t have the ability to show devicetype input preferences. Can only see this in app.

2 Likes

Feature Request - Code cleanup and formatting standards. Click a button and it auto indents and makes the code nice and tidy.

16 Likes

No find and replace within code. Broken functionality of browser search, some browsers only search what is visible.

9 Likes

Comments // don’t color code the same as block comments /* */ anymore.

2 Likes

Feature Request. Ability to quickly see the device’s events from the simulator

2 Likes