The dead drop log

In Instrumenting co-operating app I showed how a web app might create some data in a dead drop to pass back to VBA. In my example, there are many worksheets, each of which may have outstanding messages, so I need a way to track responses I might be expecting from particular deadDrop keys. I've created a log that gets automatically updated each time a web app is generated with its deadDrop key. From time to time I can run a process that examines all the outstanding message keys and checks for messages. You don't need to do this of course - it's just an easy way to handle backlogs of requests and storing their keys

Opening the log


This a one liner
Public Function getDeadDropLog() As cDataSet
    Dim ds As cDataSet
    Set ds = New cDataSet
    Set getDeadDropLog = ds.load("deadDropLog")
End Function

to get a sheet that looks like this

Adding to the log


Here I create a deaddrop handle  and update the log with the new outstanding request. The expectation is that whoever called this will pass the generated key on to the co-operating app.

Public Function addDeadDrop(subject As String, Optional yourClass As String = "googleMapping") As String
    
    ' Example showing how outstanding requests might be logged
    Dim job As cJobject, ds As cDataSet
    With getdeaddrop(yourClass, "messages", True)
        
        ' write a message for information
        With .scriptDb
            Set job = JSONParse("{'subject':'" & subject & "','info':'xliberation public data for testing'}")
            .createObject(job).flush
            job.tearDown
        End With
        
        ' add to spreadsheet log
        Set ds = getDeadDropLog
        ds.headingRow.headings("class").where.Offset(ds.rows.count + 1).value = .scriptDbClass
        ds.headingRow.headings("key").where.Offset(ds.rows.count + 1).value = .key
        ds.headingRow.headings("registered").where.Offset(ds.rows.count + 1).value = Now
        ds.tearDown
        
        addDeadDrop = .key
        .tearDown
    End With
End Function

Processing the log

My example is fairly lengthy, but the process is straightforward.  Check the log for unprocessed entries, get the data if any, update the log entry, delete the message

Public Sub processDeadDrop(Optional redo As Boolean = False, Optional deleteWhenProcessed As Boolean = True)
    
    ' example showing how you might take feedback data for an entire workbook
    Dim job As cJobject, ds As cDataSet, dr As cDataRow, data As cJobject, _
        subject As cJobject, good As Boolean, dsDrop As cDataSet
    
    ' first step is to get all the known requests
    Set dsDrop = getDeadDropLog
    For Each dr In dsDrop.rows
        ' only do the unprocessed ones or override
        If redo Or IsEmpty(dr.cell("processed")) Or Len(dr.cell("processed").toString) = 0 Then
            With getdeaddrop(dr.cell("class").toString, "messages", False, dr.cell("key").toString)
                ' now we can get all the message data for this
                .. do something with the data here .....
            End With
        End If
    Next dr
    dsDrop.column("processed").Commit
    dsDrop.tearDown

End Sub


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