DATETIME property changing when it shouldn't

[khayes1]

Hi,

I have a DATETIME property named 'Born' which records the time at which a remote thing is created on the server. I create the things via a service I wrote, which monitors for unbound devices and then creates an instance from a template I created. Immediately after the thing is created I set this property to the current time. However, I have noticed that this property updates to a later time periodically, even though I don't have any other service which sets this parameter. At first I thought there might be some old service that was being called that assigned a new time value to it. To check this I exported all my templates to an xml file on my pc and then searched for occurrences of the property 'Born'. Aside from the definition of the property in the template it only occurred in one other place, my create service.

var unboundPrinterTable = Resources["DeviceFunctions"].GetUnboundIdentifiers(maxNum);

var numPrinters = unboundPrinterTable.rows.length;

for (var x = 0; x < numPrinters; x++)

{

     var newPrinter = unboundPrinterTable.rows;

    thingObj = Things[newPrinter.name] ;

     //check to make sure it doesn't exist already

    if(thingObj)

    {

        logger.debug(newPrinter.name+" exist - abort creation!");

    }

    else

    {

          //Create the printer thing here

        var newName = newPrinter.name ;

        try

        {

            var thingParams = {

                name: newName /* STRING */,

                description: "auto generated XXXX Remote Printer thing created by SystemMonitor" /* STRING */,

                thingTemplateName: "XXXRemotePrinterTemplate" /* THINGTEMPLATENAME */,

                tags: "Applications:LinxCloud v1.0" /* TAGS */

            };

            // no return

            Resources["EntityServices"].CreateThing(thingParams);

            var newThing = Things[newName] ;

            newThing.EnableThing();

            newThing.RestartThing();

            //var ident = {identifier: params.name /* STRING */};

            var ident = {identifier: newName /* STRING */};

            newThing.SetIdentifier(ident);

            newThing.DisplayName = newName ;

            var now = new Date();

            newThing.Born = now ;

            //set up remote bindings to parameters on the edge server

            newThing.CreateRemoteBindings();

            newThing.RestartThing();

        }

        catch(err)

        {

            logger.error("Create new printer fail - err = "+err);

        }

Although most of my things were created months ago the 'Born' value on those things reads as times from earlier today. does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

thanks. Also a bit odd that all the devices appear have the same updated time

Thanks

Kieron

[khayes1]

I've since discovered that the 'Born' DATETIME property is getting updated to the current time on my things, every time I modify the template on which the things are based.

i.e. If I add a new property to the template the 'Born' property on my things get updated to the time I save the changes to the template.

Is there any way to stop this happening, All the other properties that are remotely bound do not change. Is there some setting that I should have used?

K

[CarlesColl]

It are declared as persistent?

Just one side note (not related to your problem), you should do explicit casts when dealing with TW objects:

if (thingObj) --> Should be --> if (thingObj!=null)

check my document: https://community.thingworx.com/docs/DOC-4004?et=watches.email.document_comment#comment-4469

Best Regards,

[khayes1]

Hi Carles, thanks for replying. Yes it is declared as persistent.

p.s. thanks for the javascript tip, will use that from now on.

[CarlesColl]

Then I don't know, It seems a bug, I sounds to me that there was this kind of bug on a TW version. Had you checked the release notes of TW Versions

[posipova]

Just to mention, this was reported in TW-31694 and is currently in the backlog.

• To avoid property updates values have to be set manually (via service or via the Set functionality in the Composer)
• Using a service, the following code will return an acceptable timestamp:

var mytimestamp = new Date().getTime();

• This returns milliseconds from the UNIX epoch

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article?n=CS275043