[APP][Pro] Better Logic Library - For Users

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171

Homey has quite a steep learning curve. The scarce documentation doesn’t help either, and on top of that you usually need apps written by the community that follow different, inconsistent design concepts.

In short: you are not the problem.

But Homey still has a good concept. It gives you a reasonably stable basis to build on. I have tried various smart home systems and Homey is IMO the best, even if it has some weaknesses.

172

Indeed!
(Altho i never realized it before, lol)

173

In a Math.js-expressie card I found this.
Expressie waarde (Tekst) > 00 and Expressie waarde (Tekst) < 06 is waar.
For a part of my need a can work with it.

Now I was thinking of the possibility to use “or” in the same way like
Expressie waarde (Tekst) = 04 or
Expressie waarde (Tekst) = 10 or
Expressie waarde (Tekst) = 16 or
Expressie waarde (Tekst) = 22 is waar

But no.
SyntaxError: Invalid left hand side of assignment operator = (char 5)

The value of the tag Expressie waarde (Tekst) is 22.

Do I have to do it in a other way or is it not working at all.

174

In JS, you need 2 or 3 equal signs: ==.
And in stead of the or, use ||

175

:+1:
Thanks but only changing the = in to == signs was needed.

176

I just remembered the app Temporary variables which also can do some limited calculations. I checked now and it has no problems with negative numbers, i.e. the following example calculates just fine:

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Ignore the zeros, I added them so that the “1-” is displayed in front of the variable and it’s clear that there are no spaces. Maybe @spkesDE has some ideas how to solve that?

177

I don’t know the issue. Maybe a tl;dr would be nice.

But FYI: all my code is open source.

178

See this simple flow:

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I set a variable to a negative number and then calculate 1 minus that variable.

  • Logic flow card works fine and sets a second variable to 6
  • Temporary variables works fine and calculates 6
  • BLL fails with an error
  • But if one adds a space between the minus sign and the variable, BLL works just fine

@DirkH summarised it pretty well:

So the question is pretty much if you @spkesDE have any idea what can be done to improve the handling of variables within BLL as your app doesn’t have that problem.

179

Wasn’t there recently a finding that there should be better always a blank before and after the minus? Am not sure whether you did that. Difficult to see.

180

Arie would have to check this in his code with debugging. I bet there is a check in place that I don’t have.

181

Is it possible to make a BLL-expression like an Excel cell formula like:
IF calculated-value > 2 THEN calculated-value ELSE 0

182

It is called ternary operator.
variable = (condition) ? expression1 : expression2
In the BLL field you delete the “variable =“ part and you can use something like
(5 > 1) ? 61: 90;

183

Thanks for this solution. :+1:

8 x 2 cards could be left out of a flow.
The card itself replaced another BLL card.

They were needed to reduce hours above 23 by 24.

(HH > 23) ? HH-24: HH;

184

If you have to do date and time calculations, you might use EPOCH format, the time in milliseconds since 1-1-1970. Then the functions Date.now() and Date(<EPOCHnumber>) come in handy in any field that supports expressions or BLL expressions for BLL variables and fields in AVD’s.
The first one returns the epoch number of the current date & time, whilst the second reverse the operations. Pitty that one cannot use text formatting in the reverse operation, at least I did not find it yet.

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185

What do you mean with this?
You mean convert milliseconds into a Date and then format it a certain way? If so, you can do that:

date('shorttime', now + (90*60000) )

FYI: Same as :
date('shorttime', Date.now() + (90*60000) )

FYI: in BLL expressions, Date.now() is available as now. Just to make it more readable and have for each execution a fix value of now.

186

I was trying some like Date(1718960326112, “dd-mm-yy HH:mm:ss”).
I will try your suggestions. Thanks

PS: I think there is a difference when you write “date” or “Date”, probably because they are different function from different libraries/packages. In this case BLL library and JavaScript.

187

Yes, the Date is the default Javascript object, while the date is the BLL Custom date-formating function.
See the BLL settingscreen for more info about the date (and other) method(s).

To be clear, to convert a millisecond to a Javascript Date object, you use the
Date(1718960326112)

However, formating it into a certain text-format, you use the BLL date method:
date('dd-MM-yy HH:mm:ss')
Using the date with only the format definition, will make the function use Date.now() as input.

However, the optional second parameter/argument to the date method can be any of the input:

  • A valid Date object, like Date(1718960326112) or Date.now()
    date('dd-MM-yy HH:mm:ss', Date(1718960326112))
  • A number, as in milliseconds
    date('dd-MM-yy HH:mm:ss', 1718960326112)
  • A text containing a ISO date, like 2022-11-10T19:17:01.439Z
    date('dd-MM-yy HH:mm:ss', '2022-11-10T19:17:01.439Z')
  • A text containing a default date makeup (Thus only English format right now)
188

Thanks, I was really mixing up those two functions.

189

Would it be possible to format text in different colors? And show it in the status field of an AVD?

190

Yes, you can pick any textfield as status indicator.

But no, unfortunately i cannot control colors of text.