Plugin Event Broadcasting/Pulse

Plugins would be able to send out a “Pulse” or “Broadcast” that other flows (plugin or not) would be able to receive (sort of like the button ID trigger). Each “Pulse” would contain an ID and data (usually JSON, but could be any text). This would allow for cross-plugin integrations.

E.g. 8bit’s invite tracker could receive any pulses with the id “get-invites” and then in that flow send a pulse with the id “invites” - this would be two-way communication to get data from a plugin.

This could be a risk for infinite loops, so maybe have a limit to how many back-and-forths there are or just allow pulses to return data to eliminate the need for the repeated pulses.

I’ve considered a general pulse or event system inside Inventor as an alternative to async folders. Then async folders would be implemented as (or replaced by) a delayed pulse system. I’m not sure how much of an impact a full deprecation of async folders would have, I know they aren’t used very widely because of how buggy they are.

I like the idea of plugins being able to send/recieve them as a reason to go with something like pulses rather than async folders as an async communication/triggering model.

1 Like