Can we count on Smartthings classic documentation staying around?

I often utilize the Smatthings classic developer documentation since it is more complete than the Hubitat developer documentation and most things work the same. With the changes at Smartthings, is it safe to presume that this documentation will remain available in the future? I am concerned that one day I will try to look something up there and find it gone.

Might want to grab the website with a "website grabber" app or extension to save it localy.

I think I might just do that this weekend just in case.

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Although I cannot code, I do read those from time to time to try and tweak drivers, or just out of curiousity.

I sure hope someone copies that information somewhere.

I can neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not have made a copy....

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They're using ReadTheDocs and if configured it should let you download a PDF, ePUB, or HTML format download, usually in the bottom-left menu where it says "v: latest" right now. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything for me now when I click that. Anyone having better luck?

Even better than this would be Hubitat fleshing out its own documentation, though I understand their reasoning that they don't advertise Hubitat as a development platform per se but rather something that just happens to support it. But it would still be nice. And I'm not sure Hubitat's wiki is really the best format for this (something like ReadTheDocs might actually be better), but that's another story and I'd settle for anything. :slight_smile:

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I'm pretty sure it will go away this year. They took down the whole original support pages that had pairing instructions and PDFs of the manuals for lots of devices, and that was still useful.

I made sure archive.is had a current copy of the top-level page and many of the sub pages.
https://archive.is/docs.smartthings.com

archive.org does have the whole site:
SmartThings Classic Developer Documentation — SmartThings Classic Developer Documentation

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I strongly second this! :arrow_up:

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I was thinking these same concerning thoughts about a year or so ago while perusing the SmartThings Classic documentation. I happened on to the save as PDF option, so I did just that. All 1110 pages in one file. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you where that is right now. I’m also on my phone, and it isn’t conducive to figuring that out right now either. Just know it can be done in their UI. :sunglasses:

On other ReadTheDocs sites, including ReadTheDocs' own example site, clicking anywhere in this box at the bottom will present the options for saving:

image

But on two computers with two different browsers now, this does nothing for me. However, turning off CSS does let me see where that link is supposed to be, and clicking it does indeed do something. The resulting PDF, with a bit of effort, was something I managed to find at: https://docs.smartthings.com/_/downloads/en/latest/pdf/. The ePUB file was similar except /epub/ and HTML (zipped bundle of HTML and associated files) similarly at /htmlzip/.

Maybe they made a Javascript or CSS tweak as one last move to prevent us from doing this. :smiley: I grabbed one of these while I still could, and hopefully it helps anyone else having the same problem! (But I still dream of official Hubitat docs, more than what is in the wiki now and ideally in a friendlier format.)

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I downloaded a copy with HTTrack (Android) awhile back. Seemed to work pretty well.

Even better than this would be Hubitat fleshing out its own documentation, though I understand their reasoning that they don't advertise Hubitat as a development platform per se but rather something that just happens to support it. But it would still be nice.

Advertised or not, the ability to make or use custom apps is a major feature. I, for one, would not be a customer if not for it. And what's the point of having a feature if it can't be used? I'd have been lost when starting out with writing my own apps if not for the Smartthings docs.

I don't need or expect tutorials or anything of that sort, but at the bare minimum there should be a complete list of available methods with basic information about what they do.

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I don't disagree with the desire, just stating reasons why it's likely not a priority for staff at the moment (who generally prefer efforts that improve the user-facing experience). But yes, I would definitely not be here if I could not use custom apps or drivers, either. :slight_smile:

That being said, if just a list of methods and (most of) what they do is what you want, their current developer docs aren't that lacking, aside from a few listed as "to be documented." If any of the "to do" items are lacking, often a search here will help, or just ask, as lots of people either came here with knowledge of ST that has a similar environment or learned things by trial and error here, too. It also helps to know where to look: "App," "Driver," and "Common" are going to have most of what most people are looking for. I'm still not sure there's anything quite like ST's docs that describe, for example, the lifecycle of a driver, but at least there are published examples for those.

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Sorry, unfortunately I have to disagree here...

Even simple must-have methods like sendEvent (which you have to use in every single driver) are not documented. :roll_eyes:

And even in many "documented" parts you find only the names of methods and parameters, but not what they serve for.

Really, I don't get it: IMHO Hubitat lives strongly from the community drivers and apps - why not supporting them with a real documentation? :thinking:

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I had not looked at this documentation before. It was apparently written by someone being paid by the page. :grin:

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thanks for sharing this I must get my own copy of the documentation as I am slowly but surely getting closer and closer to writing drivers and apps for hubitat.

Thanks @jlv that explains why everytime I had a question for google that directed me to the SmartThings support pages, but the page was always redirecting me to a generic front page and not the proper google result

By the way I was able to download the 1000 page pdf from here https://web.archive.org/web/20200507161807/https://readthedocs.org/projects/smartthings/downloads/pdf/latest/

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No need to dig that hard...the current ones are still availanbe from the site if you dig hard enough. :slight_smile:

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I missed that part of your article :joy::joy:

On the archived version the download menu on the bottom left still works, so it looks like they slowly removed features from the website. I see they also removed the GitHub repo that was used to generate the website.

Anyone have a similar source for their old support pages?

Hanlon's razor applies: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect

or stupidity

In this case, I don't think they removed the features on purpose but instead they just broke it and no one left there cares enough to understand why it existed or why it mattered.

I work in the industry and typically I would agree, but in this case they took a public github repo and removed access. That implies a decision was taken to take a rerepo offline or make it private.
If it was just the support website I'd believe they were upgrading something else and that broke as a consequence

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