Do's and Don'ts when developing First Project with Ignition?

Re tag structures... one of the best things with our latest architecture was using folders reasonably. Some great advice we got:

  • Aim for Jython-friendly naming, mainly avoiding spaces and being careful with non alphanumeric characters.
  • Build tagpaths that are human readable and meaningful. Concise, but clear.
  • A plug for @pturmel's Spreadsheet Import Tool, which creates implied folders as it writes tags and UDT instances. This solves a common critique of UDTs being inflexible with their members.
  • Custom properties are your friend, and you can write these from within this tool for anything that needs to be unique but won't change over time. View paths and tag paths as custom property strings are quite powerful.
  • Related, check out the var map functions in the Integraton Toolkit module and let your mind lead you in creativity. I can't divulge my secrets but they depend on these var maps heavily.
  • Folders can have custom properties, even though you cannot see these in Designer (enhancement request?). But you can write to them via system.tag.writeBlocking() and via the Spreadsheet Import Tool.
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