[BETA] App List Driver

[sburke781]

Small driver that parses the Apps page to produce a JSON string with each App Id and Name, along with a link to the parent App, if one exists. Run the refresh command to update the state variable with the App list JSON.

Installation and Usage
Install the driver using HPM or manually from here on my GitHub repository.

With the driver installed, create a virtual device using the App List driver. Run the Refresh command and shortly after refresh the browser. The state variable should then appear, populated with the Apps installed on the local HE hub.

The text can be copied and pasted into various utilities to format it for easier reading. I use Notepadd++ with the JSTool plugin.

[sburke781]

Change Log

2023-01-25 - Initial Beta Release

[sburke781]

Possible additions I may make in the future could include:

• Keeping a history of past Apps, allow for debugging of errors relating to uninstalled apps
• Expanding to include Apps across multiple HE hubs in the one list

[sburke781]

It's purely data-related at this stage, not looking to drive anything with the Apps. Not that I wouldn't do that elsewhere, or that others could do that.

This came about as some test code for an App I was thinking of writing to tie together Apps and devices that have a related purpose in the HE setup, e.g. those related to lighting in a particular room. I wanted to present them on screen with links to each App and Device, so I needed to find a way to get the App List, which was this code.

The idea for the App:

[PROJECT] Topic-Driven Interface

I don't even know if "Topic-Driven" is thing.... Anyway, my idea, which I've kind of mentioned before, is to have links to related Apps and devices all presented together based on whatever the user choose to use as their criteria. My own use case that I want it for is to group things together that go towards lighting in a particular room, such as the example below. This means I don't need to keep scrolling and looking for things based on memory every time. Other uses could be…

Some conversation whilst writing the code:

Can I Get a List of Installed Apps?

I'm interested in organising my apps and devices to suit my way of understanding things. I am interested to, within an App, get a list of installed apps, so a listing of all my RM rules, dashboards, maker api instances, Better Laundry Monitor, etc. Reason being is I would like to derive the URL for each app, so need the App Id and should be able to use the URL methods already provided to construct the full URL for the App. I then want to tag them in different ways for what they are used for, …

I'll eventually move the code into the App if I ever finish it, but thought others may find this useful in some way, off the back of some conversations around unsolicited HTTP calls from external sources trying to contact an uninstalled App, hence the potential improvement to keep old Apps previously detected in the App List JSON, rather than replacing the list every time a Refresh is done.