Adding a date feature in BangleApps

[espruino-discuss2]

Posted at 2022-06-27 by Hank

Just wondering if we can't add a date additionally to the version in each metadata.json to indicate when an app has been released. That would allow BangleApps to sort for release date. So with each commit you won't need to browse the log to identify if there are new apps. That would also allow to make an automatted "What's new".

[espruino-discuss2]

Posted at 2022-06-27 by nicoboss

that would be great, I would love that
I think this has been discussed before, but unfortunately not been found useful enough i guess

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by rigrig

You can already sort apps by "updated"/"new" in the app loader, or am I missing something?
(bin/pre-publish generates appdates.csv, based on the git log)

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by nicoboss

That s right, it, at least, sorts the apps (not exactly the same as being able to see the date). And not in the development store though

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by Hank

Not sure how to handle the bin files as I am running Windows. Is appdates.csv pre-rendered available somewhere?

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by rigrig

You can mouseover the app version to see when it was last updated, I guess adding a "first added" wouldn't be too hard? Or maybe even explicitly show those dates when sorting by new/updated.

You can directly download the file used by the official loader

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by Hank

Oh, didn't notice that. The official site can already sort for "updated" on the top right. How can I make my fork to do this as well?

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by @gfwilliams

How can I make my fork to do this as well?

As @rigrig said above, you just run bin/pre-publish.sh to generate the appdates file. It's something that it doesn't really make sense to keep in GitHub so it's just auto-generated for the main site

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Posted at 2022-06-27 by Hank

OK, got it. Can't you add an option to let the custom BangleApps show the official and current appdates.csv?
I use my personal BangleApps with my Gadgetbridge to use the most recent builds of my apps. But at the same time I really would like to sort for the date (even if my personal newer apps are not considered). This would allow me to use it better on a daily base as I can discover new things more easily.
Another option would be to make Gadgetbridge more convinient. It would be great if we could have the official BangleApps and a personal BangleApps available by just selecting it with a radio button or so from the home screen. At the moment I would need to remove the link and add it back when I want to use my personal thing. Or am I using the whole thing in a wrong way?

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Posted at 2022-07-01 by @gfwilliams

Can't you add an option to let the custom BangleApps show the official and current appdates.csv?

Maybe... but then your apps wouldn't appear in it - which maybe isn't what you want?

But actually, since you have your own branch, you could do this pretty easily yourself? The code is at https://github.com/espruino/EspruinoAppLoaderCore/blob/c46b4edd2052d0df37fea41f8839af8175a78ec9/js/index.js#L99-L118 so either you could change that, or you could just copy & paste the code into your local loader.js file with the different URL.

Or if you wanted to do a PR to make it use a Const.APPS_DATES_FILE constant instead then you could easily add a one-liner to loader.js to get it from wherever you want

It would be great if we could have the official BangleApps and a personal BangleApps available

This feels pretty niche... I mean you can always just go to banglejs.com/apps on your phone's web browser, see what's new, and then upload from Gadgetbridge? But if you wanted to send in a PR for a menu option in Gadgetbridge that could definitely be added.