Dynamic List Control

[mark]

@woland @michel @bonemap @liminal_andy @juriaan 

Very good discussion here and it's clear that the ability to adjust the contents of the Radio Button control would be a super good new addition to that plugin's capabilities. To that end, I've just made Andy a version of the Radio Button control that I'm calling List Selector. This version of the plugin allows you to change the list by sending a list of carriage return separated strings into a second controller number.

Now, it will be easy to update the Radio Control control to have this functionality once the we've gotten the Big Sur release out and the code is unfrozen. But right now I can't make any changes or @DusX and @Woland will slap me. ;-) In the meantime I've sent Andy the plugin so he won't have to abandon Isadora for this project.

Best Wishes,
Mark

[liminal_andy]

@mark I will keep an eye out for this and look forward to checking it out! I'll be sure to share what I end up doing with it for this client. 

[liminal_andy]

@mark based on how you built List Selector, how easy would a search option be for it? Or will that need to be handled by a JS actor doing substring checks?

[mark]

@liminal_andy said:

@mark based on how you built List Selector, how easy would a search option be for it? Or will that need to be handled by a JS actor doing substring checks?

 I suppose a third input could be added where you gave a sub string and it searched the list. But what is the exact functionality here? You type a substring and it selects an item from the list?

Best Wishes,
Mark

[liminal_andy]

@mark To be specific: 

There will be several hundred entries on the list, too many to scroll through for navigation. I need to be able to start entering a username into an input field and cull the dynamic list to only names containing the substring of what I am entering into the search box, exactly how the actor search feature functions. Then, I will still make a click to select the correct user from the reduced list. Finally, I will click a button to call the action on the selected user (pin, spotlight, etc.)

[liminal_andy]

We're so close! Thanks to @mark's speedy brilliance, we now have a method of controlling the list from the node editor. Mark also provided a javascript actor to do the searching function. Now the last step is reconciliation with the data array when search is enabled. Any ideas on how to achieve this? Do we need a change so that when the dynamic list element knows it is being connected to a text input, it passes by label instead of by value? Or is there some trickery we can do to find the correct username from the data array actor even when search is culling the list?

[bonemap]

@liminal_andy said:

Thanks to @mark's speedy brilliance

 cue the superhero theme music.

I don't know if I have the best solution for your unresolved procedure, because as you suggest a trigger sending the string as a parameter from the button list would be the most efficient and safest solution... But I would have thought you could deploy a text comparator comparing the search results from the JS search actor to the output of a second data array. If this data array cycled rapidly through its data while comparing the javascript search string it might stop at the matching line and provide a line reference number. I guess this requires you to have completely unique names for each line entry in the array data.

best wishes

Russell

[liminal_andy]

@bonemap said:

<p>@liminal_andy said:</p> <blockquote>Thanks to @mark's speedy brilliance</blockquote> <p> cue the superhero theme music.</p><p>I don't know if I have the best solution for your unresolved procedure, because as suggested accessing the string parameter would be the most efficient and safest solution... But I would have thought you could deploy a second data array to write temporary assignments that precede your search event and output the string required for the next step in the chain.</p><p>best wishes</p><p>Russell</p>

 clever, I wonder if there is a simple way for me to re-use the JS code that culls the dynamic list to act upon a copy database, simultaneously pruning it so the list and the database remain in sync.

[bonemap]

@liminal_andy said:

clever

 I have reflected on this a liitle more and edited my response.

[mark]

@liminal_andy said:

 clever, I wonder if there is a simple way for me to re-use the JS code that culls the dynamic list to act upon a copy database, simultaneously pruning it so the list and the database remain in sync.

There is. You just need to store the index of the items with the lines in JS, do the filtering, and then split the outputs to give a list of the indexes and a list of the text. You can then use the list of indexes to look up the item in the original list.

Sending the test file that includes this functionality to you now.

function main()

{
    var outStringIndexes = "";
    var outStringLines = "";
    var inputLines = arguments[0].match(/[^\r\n]+/g);
    var i;
    var indexedLines = [ ];
    for (i=0; i<inputLines.length; i++) {
        var rec = [ i+1, inputLines[i] ];
        // print(rec[0] + " " + rec[1] + "\n");
        indexedLines.push(rec);
    }
    for (i=0; i<inputLines.length; i++) {
        var needle = arguments[1].toLowerCase();
        var haystack = indexedLines[i][1].toLowerCase();
        if (haystack.includes(needle)) {
            outStringIndexes += indexedLines[i][0] + "\n";
            outStringLines += indexedLines[i][1] + "\n";
        }
    }
    return [outStringIndexes, outStringLines];
}

Best Wishes,
Mark