(yet) another agent scope issue

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
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1

Sorry for the basic question. After a long time without TBX I’m getting onto it again and forgot some basics. Issues of “scope” are the ones more difficult to me.

I have several original notes (T1,T2,T3 on the first TASKS container; T4 on the second TASKS container) and I’d like AGENT1 to retrieve only T1,T2,T3, and AGENT2 to only retrieve T4 – i.e. the notes inside the TASKS container, child of the agent’s parent, which have a given $prototype.

I’m trying with the query

descendedFrom(parent(that)) & $Prototype==“somePrototype”;

but the two agents collect all notes. Help appreciated. I really need to grasp queries and scopes.

2020-03-16_10-12-10_PM

2

Why not begin by collecting all the tasks by the explicit path?

Agent 1: inside(/PROJECT1/TASKS)

Agent 2: inside(/PROJECT2/TASKS)

Try that. Does it work as expected? Great! We can improve it. Or maybe not? We can clarify what’s wrong.

This is a common pattern. When agents aren’t right, begin by writing an agent that does at least part of the task, and that it so simple that it cannot possibly be wrong.

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3

What is ‘that’ in this context? I assume you’re trying to refer to the parent of the agent in which case the query syntax is:

descendedFrom(parent(agent)) & $Prototype=="somePrototype"

For agent ‘Agent1’, querey term descendedFrom(parent(agent)) refers to container ‘Project1’

Note also:

  • the ‘that’ designator is intended for use with find() which is not used in agents as the agent query is essentially a ‘find’.
  • queries, in agents (or find or if()) do not use semi-colon terminators. The latter are used in action code to delimit discrete expressions with the overall section of code. IOW: $Color="blue";$Width=5; is one action containing two discrete expressions, ore setting the note’s colour, the other its map icon width.
  • T1 would more usually and more understandably be described in Tinderbox as being ‘in’ a container rather than ‘on’ a container.
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4

Yes, explicit path does work, but as I am intending to have lots of projects :slight_smile: I’m looking for a programmatic solution to save time.

5

Thank you. For the solution and the (as always) explanation. I’ve used ‘that’ before but you are right, it was only with find().

6

OK. Progress! But we don’t want to keep working out the explicit path; we want the relative path. “Find the tasks that are in the tasks container that is my sibling”

Agent 1 before: inside(/PROJECT1/TASKS)
Agent 1 after : inside(tasks(parent(agent)))

All things being considered, though, I always stop when tempted to parameterize agents this way. You can do it! It’s fine! But when you do this, Tinderbox is whispering in your ear: “Is this something you can do with attribute browser? With cross tabs? Is this answering a question you know you need, or is it premature formalization?”

But if the answer is, “yes, this is a question I want to ask!” then it’s not that hard.
tasks(parent(agent)) is simply “the tasks contains that is inside the parent of the agent.”

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7

Thank you. That is very true. Tinderbox is so open handed that there are so many ways of reaching to a solution. Sometimes you complicate because you didn’t know an easier alternative, other times because you want to make a very complex script just to brag :slight_smile:

EDIT: and I never thought it would be this quick to put your thought into practice. I just wanted to isolate some notes from their descendants to output a clean timeline view. BUT timeline view has the option not to include descendants. So … turns out this was really unnecessary! But still good from a learning perspective.

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