Newbie Question Topic is solved

[mrwjca]

Hello,
being all new and learning a lot of new things and so.
I was wondering, probably a stupid question(s) but please don't hurt me.

Playing with Dashticz,
I currently work on a windows laptop and try things via remote desktop on the Raspberry Pi and make changes in the config.js file and then I try by loading in chorme the Dashticz page and see if it works or not.
Is there a way (not sure how to explain) maybe to play with dashticz like in a test way to see if things work and so, and later upload the config.js file to the Raspberry?
the thing is I am fairly new to Raspbery Pi, Domoticz and Dashticz so I need to learn a lot.
Any advise on where to get good tips and tricks for programming in regard to Raspbery Pi, Domoticz and Dashticz?
Currently getting info fro:
https://wiki.domoticz.com/wiki/Main_Page
https://www.domoticz.com/forum/
And of course Google.

thx for your help/advise

[H0ppie]

Hi there,

Recently I found a way for myself which helps me a lot for trying new things out with Dashticz. Gonna try to explain it:
First I am going to explain what challenge I had. Finally after some playing around I had a stable dashboard which was my starting point. Knowing that I would implement new stuff/plugins to the dashboard but didn't want to have splash screen saying that my config.js had an error I wanted to be able to switch between my stable and beta branch so to say. First I did this within the config.js from the custom folder with if statements etc. This was getting bigger and bigger, also getting more complex with each line I wrote.

Then I thought to myself: wait a minute, I recall reading something about multiple dashboards within Dashticz... So I looked through the Dashticz wiki and found this part. By default with the installation of Dashticz you get 2 custom folders: custom and custom_2. Same goes for the html file index. For me my custom_2 folder and index2.html are for debugging and new stuff. Where the other folder and file are my stable dashboad, when done playing around and have something stable I will copy it to my stable dashboard (which can still bring some bugs though...).

Ok, that was how I use the opportunities of Dashticz to my advantage. Now which tools I use to make it more practical to edit the config.js etc. I edit all my files just on a Windows desktop/laptop, on here I use Notepad++ as my editor. This won't get my files on my Raspberry of course, therefore I have FileZilla. This Windows program uses File Transfer Protocol to transfer files between systems, hence the name. Within FileZilla I connect to my Raspberry, navigate to the desired Dashticz folder and upload my files there. Currently I have 3 screens in front of me, 2 for desktop and a tablet. Now it's needed, since I'm optimizing my dashboard for tablet.

EDIT: Just to add some more clarification: when I transfered my edited code to my Raspberry using FileZilla, I can quickly see in my browser (Chrome) what the effect of my changes are on my Dashboard. Just as easy on my Windows desktop.

Hopefully I've explained it clear enough and hopefully I understood your question correctly.

ps. Most features, both the end result as the dev-process, are written in the wiki or at least a small pointer. Since a little research is part of the journey.