Question: Resolving raised intents to the app that raised them

[Roaders]

Question Area

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Question

The spec states that the Agent SHOULD:

Ensure that context messages broadcast by an application on a channel are not delivered back to that same application if they are joined to the channel.

But it doesn't mention anything similar for raising and handling intents.

Just to clarify: There is nothing in the spec that states that intent resolution should not select the app that raised the intent?

[kriswest]

I don't think that's explicitly stated no, but its probably been assumed (how often do you call your own phone number, from your own phone?). I'm not aware of any existing implementations that allow it.

Does your question relate to multiple widgets in a single 'app'?

[Roaders]

this relates to code that is written in a library that could be called from any app. It's easier to jsut raise the intent and have it be handled regardless of where it is invoked from.

I can definitely see use cases of where I want something to handle an intent which could be another instance of the app that I am currently in or the current instance.

So the assumption is that this is not implemented by agents. WHat should happen then? The agent thrown an error if it can't find an app other than the one that raised it? I guess it would throw the NoAppsFound error

[kriswest]

I think I have seen other instances of the same app offered as resolution choices, just not the same instance. I think the best reference in the standard for this is:

Raising an Intent is a method for an application to request functionality from another application and, if desired, defer the discovery and launching of the destination app to the Desktop Agent.

https://fdc3.finos.org/docs/api/spec#raising-intents

I read that as a different instance - but technically not what it says. We could clarify that in 3.0...
Otherwise, we could assume (and/or clarify) that its upto the DA to decide on the logic used, as we also say things like:

Successful delivery of an intent depends first upon the Desktop Agent's ability to "resolve the intent" (i.e. map the intent to a specific App instance). Where the target application is ambiguous (because there is more than one application that could resolve the intent and context) Desktop Agents may resolve intents by any suitable methodology.

https://fdc3.finos.org/docs/api/spec#resolvers

So the assumption is that this is not implemented by agents. WHat should happen then? The agent thrown an error if it can't find an app other than the one that raised it? I guess it would throw the NoAppsFound error

If there are no valid options (from the DA's perspective), then yes NoAppsFound is the right error.

[Roaders]

ok, thanks Kris. Perhaps a discussion for the next meeting. Do we need to clarify this / add recommendations or perhaps even add a conformance test. I think from my point of view in some cases it's useful to be able to handle an intent from the same app that raises it but if that was a should not then I could work around it.

[Roaders]

This was discussed at #1865 and a solution was proposed:

• By default agents should not allow the app that has raised an intent to be considered for resolving that intent
• This functionality can be enabled with an additional parameter added to getAgent in a similar way to that proposed in Allow apps to decide if they receive their own broadcast messages #1751