Suggestion for Improved Validator Experience

[Kaya]

In response to an Ask Kaya post titled "When will those 'Invisible at Runtime' widgets truly disappear?", one user suggested the following.

What could also be useful (instead of having to configure and use a validator) is the possibility to just "invert" a boolean returned from a service when creating a binding to another parameter or widget property. This would especially be useful for making a binding to the "Visible" property of a widget. Sometimes you only want to show a widget when a service outputs a boolean with a value 'false'. Nowadays you have to add a validator widget, create a parameter on it, bind the service to it, and configure the expression to invert the parameter, and then create a binding between the output of the validator and the property of the widget. That is a lot of overhead for just that, I believe.

[Kaya]

In response to an Ask Kaya post titled "When will those 'Invisible at Runtime' widgets truly disappear?", one user suggested the following.

What could also be useful (instead of having to configure and use a validator) is the possibility to just "invert" a boolean returned from a service when creating a binding to another parameter or widget property. This would especially be useful for making a binding to the "Visible" property of a widget. Sometimes you only want to show a widget when a service outputs a boolean with a value 'false'. Nowadays you have to add a validator widget, create a parameter on it, bind the service to it, and configure the expression to invert the parameter, and then create a binding between the output of the validator and the property of the widget. That is a lot of overhead for just that, I believe.

[Jaime_Lee]

PTC has received your idea and your peers (by voting this idea up) seems to agree this would be a valuable enhancement!

[VladimirRosu]

One possible implementation would be simple transforms doable on the bindings themselves, like in ThingWorx Flow ?

Something like being capable to add on a binding a validator. The Validator will automatically gain the input and output of the binding and you could write your own Javascript transform there. 

Again, exactly like in Flow.

[cbaldwin]

We have been discussing this internally, and may target it for 2022.

[atiwari-4]

Hello, ThingWorx community user,

Thanks for your idea and suggestion. We're still considering this idea for our long-term roadmap in the CY 2025-26 timeframe.

Regards,

Ayush Tiwari

Director, ThingWorx Product Management