Compare rule "Watchlisted by" against empty ruleset

[TuGeek]

Describe the bug
I'm trying to create a rule that says "if 'Watchlisted by' is empty [] then true to delete it" but when I compare the empty list with the string "[]" it tells me it's false.

To Reproduce

Expected behavior
Since the list is empty and I compare it with an empty list, it should give "true" in the rule.

Device (please complete the following information):

• OS: Docker
• Version 2.1.0

[ydkmlt84]

I just had a thought about this and wanted to share. What if you said watchlisted by, not contains, everyone. Then I would assume it would return as true.

[TuGeek]

I just had a thought about this and wanted to share. What if you said watchlisted by, not contains, . Then I would assume it would return as true.

Thats the result with different combinations:
(equals)

(not_equals)

(contains)

(not_contains)

(contains_partial)

(not_contains_partial)

[ydkmlt84]

Well, in the formatting of my post I used <> and when it was actually posted it removed that section. So I will try again.

What I was trying to say is, what if you put a random name in there. Equaling no one is the same as not equaling (James, Lisa, Mary, John, Frank). So if you are looking for stuff that is watchlisted by no one, could you say not contains and list everyone?
So that when it is comparing it will return true if the list is empty because it wouldn't equal/contain their names?

I don't know if I am making sense but basically equals no one is the same as not equals everyone.

[TuGeek]

Now I think I understand you, but in that case I would need to know the list of all possible people to compare it with the list of people who have seen the item. And for that I would need to have something like "All Plex users".

I hope you understood me now... :)

[ydkmlt84]

I thought you were just looking for stuff not watchlisted by anyone.

[TuGeek]

Yes, that would be what I'm looking for. Can you think of a way to do it?

[ydkmlt84]

Yes, that would be what I'm looking for. Can you think of a way to do it?

Thats what I was trying to say earlier. Equaling no one is the same as not equaling everyone/anyone. So you could say not contains and list everyone. Then it would return true as it wouldn't equal anyone. Instead of trying to equal blank to blank. Change it to not equaling a list of everyone.

[ydkmlt84]

Yes, that would be what I'm looking for. Can you think of a way to do it?

Also are we sure we're even talking about the same thing? Watchlisted and a "list of watches" are different things. Watchlisted is a feature in Plex where you can add something to your watchlist (or your "want to watch list").
Looking for people who watched something is a different thing. Just wanted to clarify.

[TuGeek]

It's hard to explain in writing, and we might be a bit lost in translation... I'm not an English speaker and I might be wrong about something.

My idea is to be able to make a rule that allows a certain item to be deleted when it is not included in anyone's Watchlist.

So, my first idea was "if the rule 'Watchlisted by' is empty" it means that no one has it in their watchlist.

I hope I'll finally be able to get my ideas across to you :)

[ydkmlt84]

It's hard to explain in writing, and we might be a bit lost in translation... I'm not an English speaker and I might be wrong about something.

My idea is to be able to make a rule that allows a certain item to be deleted when it is not included in anyone's Watchlist.

So, my first idea was "if the rule 'Watchlisted by' is empty" it means that no one has it in their watchlist.

I hope I'll finally be able to get my ideas across to you :)

I understand completely. We're on the same page there.
How you would do it is put everyone's name whose watchlist it could be in, and say not equals. That is the same as equaling empty.
What is the exact opposite of being in no one's watchlist?

[TuGeek]

I had thought about enabling the comparison of empty arrays and being able to do the reverse, that is, whenever "Watchlisted by" is an empty array "[]" and I compare it with the empty array text "[]" and it is "equal" it should give True. For me it is comparing 2 empty strings, which in essence should be the same. When someone has watchlisted it, the array would be "[John Doe, Jane Doe]" and when comparing with an empty array "[]" with the "equal" rule it would give False

[ydkmlt84]

What do you mean when someone has seen it?

[TuGeek]

What do you mean when someone has seen it?

When someone "Watchlisted", sorry... -_-

[ydkmlt84]

You should come over to discord and we can DM about it.

[henryjrobertson]

I have same issue, I think. Was there was a resolution discussed elsewhere? Ideally, I just want to add a rule so a title won't get deleted if anyone has it in their watchlist. Trying to match on [] and [] doesn't seem to work when I test with something that has a watchlist attached.

[ydkmlt84]

You don't want to delete something if it's on the watchlist of someone, right?

The solution is to put not contains and list all users ["user1","user2","user3", "etc"]. It's reverse logic. So, equals no one is the same as doesn't equal everyone.

[henryjrobertson]

Thanks for the reply! I actually picked this up off the Discord chat history after I posted.

firstValue: Plex.watchlist_isListedByUsers
      action: NOT_EQUALS
      lastValue: Plex.watchlist_isListedByUsers

Works for my use case without listing all the Users manually. If any Users have media in a watchlist, it will return false.

[ydkmlt84]

Nice. I am glad you found your answer!

[bitnimble]

Heya, the most recent workaround doesn't seem to work anymore (empty list != empty list is returning false for me), so I just wanted to bump this ticket.

I'm a developer and I'm happy to raise a PR to implement this as a feature, if it's reasonable to simply add "Empty list" as a match value, i.e.:

While doing != [user1, user2, user3, ...] works, it's a bit inelegant and can be very tedious to enumerate every single Plex user (especially if you have a lot of users on your server), not to mention you have to go update the list every time a new Plex user joins the server. I also don't think it's top-of-mind as a solution when somebody wants to simply match against an empty list, as demonstrated by the existence of this Github issue.

LMK if that seems reasonable and I can go ahead and raise a PR :)

(such a matcher would also be very useful for all other list[] values, especially ones where you can't simply enumerate all of the possible values easily, like Labels)

[benscobie]

Heya, the most recent workaround doesn't seem to work anymore (empty list != empty list is returning false for me), so I just wanted to bump this ticket.

You shouldn't need to workaround this any more if I'm understanding your scenario correctly. An empty list to empty list comparison should return true when using equals (OPs original issue), so you can do that instead. You can use not equals empty list for the inverse.

With regards to your suggestion, something I'd like to implement for lists is Count equals, Count not equals, Count greater & Count smaller. I believe that'll be more flexible.

[bitnimble]

Yep, after cloning and reading through the code and finding the isStringParsableToArray bit in the comparator, just realised that equals [] works just fine. I swear I tried that the first time around when I first started using Maintainerr and it didn't work... maybe I was just crazy. Well, I'm happy at least :)

re: count - that sounds reasonable and definitely more flexible. Still happy to raise a PR for that if you think that it's a decent first task into the repo :)

[benscobie]

Yep, after cloning and reading through the code and finding the isStringParsableToArray bit in the comparator, just realised that equals [] works just fine. I swear I tried that the first time around when I first started using Maintainerr and it didn't work... maybe I was just crazy. Well, I'm happy at least :)

Not crazy haha, this was fixed in v2.7.0

re: count - that sounds reasonable and definitely more flexible. Still happy to raise a PR for that if you think that it's a decent first task into the repo :)

We'd be very happy to accept that. I just had a very brief look at a possible implementation; add a new RuleType (RuleType.TEXT_ARRAY?) with new RulePossibility's (RulePossibility.COUNT_EQUALS etc.) in rules.constants.ts. Then update the [list] ones to return that instead of RuleType.TEXT. That can then be used in the UI to show the correct actions. After that it should just be a case of updating rule.comparator.service.ts with the new comparisons and some tests. I am @Scoob on the Maintainerr Discord if you have any questions.

[ydkmlt84]

Just to put my two cents in here, there is also a new rule in the dev branch that just returns true or false if the item is watchlisted by anyone.