Loopback VirtualParameters - good or evil?

[Alexander Münn]

Hello,

One of my provision scripts generates some values that need to be 
exported so that they become readable from the GUI. First, I thought 
using VirtualParameters in this case is straight forward, but ended up 
with try and error. Mostly because the documentation at [1] seems to be 
a bit out-dated? It states that "Virtual parameter scripts don't have 
the variable args" and further "Virtual parameter scripts have the 
variables timestamps and values.".
In contrast the sandbox doesn't provide either 'timestamps' or 'values' 
variable. Instead I see the args array containing always(?) four 
objects. After some experimenting my interpretation of each element is:

  args[0] - reference timestamp on read access; empty on set
  args[1] - value object for writes; empty on get
  args[2] - some timestamps ?
  args[3] - last read value from device parameters

On top of that I'm using following (loopback) VirtualParameter 
definition:

  const next = args[1];
  const last = args[3];

  /* default value */
  if (!last.value) {
    last.value = ["", "xsd:string"];
  }

  return {writable: true, value: next.value ? next.value : last.value};


I'd like to discuss this "feature". Does anybody already use this or 
something similar? Is the calling API to virtual parameter scripts 
stable in this way?  --Alex


[1] https://github.com/zaidka/genieacs/wiki/Virtual-Parameters