Homey App Upload

CLI tool and library to make developing apps for the Homey home automation platform a bit easier.

The purpose is to allow for incremental app updates to be pushed to Homey during app development.

Installation

This tool consists of two parts: a library that you need to include in your Homey app, and a CLI (command line interface) tool that you should install on the computer you are developing on.

Library

Installation

$ cd path-to-your-homey-app
$ npm install homey-app-upload-lib

Usage

The library needs to be initialized from the onInit method of your app, and should be passed your app's manifest as an argument:

const HomeyAppUpload = require('homey-app-upload-lib');

...

class YourHomeyApp extends Homey.App {
  onInit() {
    HomeyAppUpload(this.manifest);
    ...
  }
  ...
}

Remarks:

• The library requires the homey:manager:api permission, and will refuse to run when it isn't set.
• The library should not be used in published apps.
• At the moment, only one app can have an uploader active.

CLI

Installation

$ npm install homey-app-upload-cli -g

Usage

homey-app-upload – Homey App Upload

Usage:
  homey-app-upload [options] upload

Options:
  -h --help                     Show this screen
  --version                     Show version
  -i --incremental              Perform incremental updates
  -I --incremental-file=<file>  File to use for incremental update metadata
  -u --url=<url>                Homey Uploader Server URL
  -n --no-restart               Don't restart app after changes have been uploaded
  --dry-run                     Just show which files would have been uploaded
  -v --verbose                  More verbose output

Instead of passing -u, you can set an environment variable HOMEY_APP_UPLOAD_URL
that contains the URL for the upload server:

    export HOMEY_APP_UPLOAD_URL=http://192.168.1.100:5481/

First, run athom project --run to upload the app to Homey initially. Keep it running, and open another window/terminal from which to run (incremental) updates using this CLI tool.

By default, the CLI tool uploads the entire app. It will take into account .gitignore and .homeyignore files to determine which files to ignore.

Incremental updates

If you want incremental updates, use the -i option:

$ homey-app-upload -i upload

Incremental updates work by checking the timestamp of a metadata file (--incremental-file) against the files and directories in the app directory. Only the changed files will be uploaded, typically reducing the upload time significantly when compared to uploading the entire app.

App restarts

After uploading, the default action is to restart the app. This can be prevented using the -n/--no-restart option.