Vote for change. Debug "payload" only || or || the whole `msg`?

General
1

I've opened a request at Core Dev. sub-section,
but I'm interested how average users think about this?

  • The current behaviour of Debug is good enough.
    Everyone should change to msg one by one.
  • It is a good idea to have a setting for this,
    but the old "payload" should be the default = [ x ] checked.
  • It's time for change! Make msg default
    & add an option at User Setting. (default = [ ] unchecked)
0 voters

kép
kép650×386 5.93 KB

Why ?

I'm asking this, because in many cases it is misleading that only a small part of the whole msg is visible at the right side. Especially since "topic" was introduced.

2

This was discussed recently and, if I remember correctly, it was decided that there would be an enhancement, though I don't remember exactly what was decided.

3

This PR is already merged for v5 - Allow a nodes defaults to be overridden by settings.js file by dceejay · Pull Request #5591 · node-red/node-red · GitHub
Allows setting the defaults for that and many nodes if required.

4

I voted to keep msg.payload as default.

I always manually set to "Complete Message", it's an "annoying" always process. In 5 years I think there were maybe 2% of cases in which I only wanted to debug msg.payload and even then I probably decided to switch to the whole message.

BUT, in the beginning, having it as msg.payload by default, helped a lot in teaching me the importance of the payload property. It is basically "the main thing", especially in regards to the default nodes and in travels between servers.

I think a beginner should work with the payload first, and then realize there's the msg layer, and payload is part of it, and so on. I know it sounds very "obvious" and "they should know that already" probably.

Maybe make a setting "debug whole message by default", for advanced users.

5

Thanks, that's great but:

  • manipulating the settings file is not user friendly at all.
  • I need to install it to 50+ PC. Changing those always is a pain in the ...
  • I think if v5 node.js minimum is not backported to v20, I wound be able to switch to v5, because the last version that still runs on Win7-32bit is Node.js v20.

< OFF >

:smiley: Don't you feel You contradict yourself "a little bit"?

My experience when I started to use NR:

  • IMHO my English is not bad.
    (I even learned a semester as "English + programmer teacher")

  • yet, I did not know that "payload" word, had to look up.
    I guess msg.data had been too easy + logical + international ... :wink:

  • and I always forgot it, when I had to type it in a function...

  • It always confused me, because I did not see the whole msg structure.

  • Even yesterday I did a mistake by sending out a trigger to a 2th output via:
    node.send([null, {}]); instead of
    node.send([null, {"payload": true}]); and had to debug for 3 hours...
    (Because I have "tried" it in an inject node: and it seemed to work! = changed "true" to empty obj. But actually the inject sets "payload" by default, what I forgot to check.)

Usually I work 6-12 weeks with NR + JS, than put it aside for 12-24 month. When I get back, I've already forgot almost everything and have to start over learning NR again. :sad_but_relieved_face: