Features, improvements, SDK releases, and more.
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Breaking changes:
New:
endpoint parameter to the Interval constructor. This endpoint is the URL where your Interval Server instance is hosted. For example: "wss://<YOUR INTERVAL SERVER URL>/websocket".Interval SDK v1.5.0 includes two brand new I/O methods: io.input.slider for requesting a number within a range using a slider UI and io.display.html for rendering basic HTML content in your actions or pages.
user.role and user.teams properties to ctx for the current user running the action or viewing the page.warnOnClose option to action definitions to opt into disabling warnings when leaving the page in a middle of a transaction.initiallySelected prop to io.select.table to specify the initial selection state.We're also testing a new platform for writing, running, and sharing Interval actions in your browser. If you'd like to help us test it, try it out by joining the waitlist or stop by our Discord server and request access.
v1.1.0 of our TypeScript and Python SDKs adds more customization options for content in tables. Markdown is now supported in table cells, and you can use the new highlightColor prop to add color accents to individual cells. We also upgraded tables to support dynamic column widths, so table columns will automatically resize to fit their contents and fit more of your data on screen.
You'll find expanded Markdown support in other places, too, like the helpText prop on all components that support it. (Expanded Markdown support does not require an SDK upgrade.)
We've also improved redirect behavior in Pages and Actions, and we added a global onError handler that's perfect for logging or reporting to error services like Sentry. See the full v1.1.0 changelog for everything that's changed.
minimal-ui mode.v0.36.0 of our Node SDK was our final release of 2022 and it includes a handful of features you requested - including a new I/O method: io.display.grid for displaying collections of data like photos, cover art, and more.
This method includes settings for column width, image crop, aspect ratio, linking, and per-item dropdown menus. If you're currently using io.display.table for content with images (videos, blog posts, etc.) this might be a better fit for you!
For users on our Teams plan and higher, you can now grant team-level access to actions and pages directly from within your app's code. If you're using Pages, permissions set at the page level will also apply to actions and pages nested within that page. Visit the docs to see how you can define permissions in code.
Connections between your app and your users' browsers are currently relayed through Interval, but soon we'll be removing this relay step to create a direct connection under the hood between your app and your users. We're still finalizing benchmarks, but the early results from our internal testing indicate that this will be the single biggest upgrade to the performance of Interval apps so far. 🚀
This new functionality is currently in private beta. If you'd like to try the Direct Connect beta, let us know and we'll enable it for your account.
isFilterable and isSortable props to io.display.table and io.select.table for disabling filtering and sorting if desired — this is particularly useful for tables with asynchronous data."quiet" setting to the options for logLevel in the Interval client to reduce terminal console logging.columns and accessorKey values in io.display.table and io.select.table are now type checked against your input data.getData function are now properly displayed in both the host terminal console and the web dashboard.We're big fans of file based routing here at Interval, having used frameworks like Next.js and Remix in many of our own projects. With file based routing, adding new pages or actions to your app is as simple as creating a file and exporting some code from it. Your application perfectly mirrors your app's structure on the filesystem and you don't have to manually import code each time you want to add a page or an action.
Today, we're excited to bring file based routing to Interval as an experimental feature.
As you'd expect, Interval will recursively walk directories and detect your app's structure from the filesystem. To add actions and pages, just create a file with a default Action or Page export and Interval will handle the rest. Then, initializing your app is as easy as using the new routesDirectory property:
import Interval from '@interval/sdk/dist/experimental'
import path from 'path'
const interval = new Interval({
apiKey: '<YOUR API KEY>',
routesDirectory: path.resolve(__dirname, 'routes'),
})
interval.listen()
We've been using this internally and it very quickly replaced inline definitions as our go-to method for building apps with Interval.
For more, check out the file routing API docs.
By popular request, we've added a more prominent bar across the top of the screen to help you differentiate between development and production environments, along with several color options to choose from.
Last week we shipped v0.32 of our Node.js SDK which includes two updates to our display components — both of which are excellent companions to our new Routing API.
First, there's a new io.display.metadata component for displaying a series of label/value data pairs in your choice of list, grid, and card layouts.
Second, we've made io.display.heading more powerful with some new props:
To show off these updates, here's a demo of an app that pulls in data for artists and tracks from the Spotify API:
We've just launched our brand new community Discord where anyone can ask questions, submit feedback, share what you're building, and chat with our team. Stop by and say hello!
Today we're excited to announce the rollout of a brand new look for your Interval dashboard! Your actions will continue to look and function as they always have, but we've made a few noticeable changes to the surrounding chrome - and many more changes under the hood - to make your apps even more powerful and to pave the way for some big API updates.
The first thing you'll notice is that most of the Interval chrome is gone. Settings are now located in a single menu in the top right corner, allowing your app to take over the entire screen.
We've also replaced the "Actions" and "Develop" menu items with environments named "Production" and "Development". Functionally, nothing has changed - Development is scoped to your personal Interval account, while Production is shared with the whole team - but we've found these labels to be more recognizable to new users. And if you're using custom environments, they'll appear in the same menu.
And finally, there's a brand new navigation bar across the top. We're handing the keys for that over to you with the new Router API.
While actions are the bread and butter of building with Interval, powerful internal tools may call for more sophisticated UIs and structure, such as dashboards, list and resource views, and hierarchical navigation.
Interval's Router API lets you build these more powerful features within your Interval app.
With the Router API you can:
The new dashboard was designed specifically for this new API, so we'd love for you to try it out. To get started, reply to this email, and we'll enable access for your account.
Note: Names and functionality of Router API methods are very likely to change.
Check out the docs to learn more about the new routing APIs.
io.confirmIdentity in SDK v0.30.0, allowing you to programmatically prompt for 2FA verification inside high stakes actions with a single line of code. (demo))io.display.code to display code with syntax highlighting and a copy button inside your pages and actions.io.group now accepts keyed objects, making it easier to grab a subset of keys from the response object.unlisted. You can still link to them from other actions, but they won't otherwise appear in the UI.primary, secondary, and danger are available as button themes beginning with SDK v0.31.0.Until today, all Interval actions have had the same blue 'Continue' button at the bottom of each form, resulting in suboptimal UX (and also some interesting workarounds!) in some cases.
Starting with our v0.27 of our Node SDK, you can now customize the label of that button, and change its color for additional caution, via io.group.
We've added two new I/O methods to Interval: io.display.image and io.display.video. Both methods have multiple size options to choose from and support displaying media from a URL or a Buffer (which pairs nicely with our file upload API).
Interval now supports multi-factor authentication (MFA), also known as two-factor authentication, for added account security. MFA can be enabled for individual user accounts and can optionally be enforced for everyone in your organization. Visit the docs to learn how to turn on MFA for your account.
Customizable menus can now be added to rows in io.select.table and io.display.table. These menus make it even easier to link multiple actions together and create advanced dashboards in Interval.
SDK v0.25.0 also introduces methods for dynamically adding and removing actions after calling interval.listen(). For apps with a large number of actions, leveraging .add() will significantly reduce your app's startup time - something we've appreciated while working on our own internal tools in the Console.
This update also includes methods for dynamically adding and removing action groups. In case you missed it, action groups - introduced in v0.22.0, and available inside the experimental namespace - allow you to construct arbitrary path-like hierarchies to keep your actions organized.
Speaking of performance upgrades: this week we shipped a handful of changes across Interval that combine to make your apps feel more responsive, such as adding faster data parsing, optimizing page-to-page navigation, and reusing the connection between Interval and your app where possible.
Frontend performance tuning is unfortunately an oft-ignored aspect of web development. But for apps built with Interval, it's our job to worry about the frontend, not yours - which means we're constantly working to make your user experience better, without any additional effort on your part 🙂
Everything we build at Interval is designed to complement your existing development workflows. It's common for these workflows to include deploying to multiple environments like 'test' or 'staging'. And after many requests and lots of coding, today we're excited to share that support for multiple environments in Interval is in beta!
When you add a new environment to your dashboard, you'll see a new menu in the top-left corner where you can switch between environments. (or, pro tip: you can switch from the new ⌘+K menu, too.) Each environment has its own Dev mode and Live mode, transaction history, and API keys, giving you plenty of options to set up your tools in whichever way suits your organization.
We'll be rolling out this update to everyone in the coming weeks, but if you want to skip the line, shoot us an email at hello@interval.com and we'll enable the beta on your account.
We've also done some housekeeping in our onboarding flow. We sprinkled in more links, contextual information, and definitions to help orient you as you create your first action. If you haven't given Interval a shot yet, now's a great time to try it out 🙂
We're big fans of keyboard navigation at Interval, so this week we're happy to share that we've added a command bar to help you quickly navigate around the dashboard. Hit ⌘+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux to bring it up:
From the menu you can quickly navigate to any dashboard page, run actions, and quickly access the docs. You can also submit feedback to the team from anywhere in the dashboard - and if you have any, we'd love to hear from you!
We've heard from many of you that Interval has helped you create uniquely powerful apps that simply aren't possible with other platforms. Today we're excited to showcase some of that power through our brand new examples gallery.
Our first six examples showcase a range of Interval-enabled functionality, including migrating and editing user data, connecting to 3rd party APIs, monitoring metrics with Slack notifications, and even comparing visual differences between screenshots.
Each example includes sample code, screenshots, video demos, and a step-by-step walkthrough of how to build the tool. You can also try out any of these for yourself by running npx create-interval-app@latest and selecting any of the templates from the menu.
ctx.action.url prop that's useful for building OAuth flows.io.display.object as a JSON file.io.display.markdown.Version 0.22.0 of our Node SDK features an all-new input validation API. You can now provide custom validation functions by chaining a .validate() method to individual I/O inputs or an io.group. In true Interval spirit, these validation functions are just plain old JavaScript/TypeScript functions that are defined and executed in your codebase.
Below is an example of our validation API being used to confirm that an email is available by running a query in our app's database:
You can also combine multiple values from a group:
This is a huge upgrade to our developer experience that will help you create even more robust apps with clear error messaging for your users.
Check out the validation docs to learn more.
For those of you with growing libraries of actions, we're excited to say that nested actions are now in beta! We'll be rolling this out to all users soon, but if you want to become an early adopter and provide input on the API, reply to this email and we'll add you to the beta.
We just introduced an input.file method under the experimental flag - perfect for uploading images, text, JSON, and other types of files to use in your actions. Check out the input.file docs to learn more.
Tables in Interval gained filtering, sticky column headers, and a more compact layout for increased data density - all great upgrades for working with large sets of data:
For those of you with serverless architectures, we've begun testing support for deploying Interval to serverless functions. Visit the docs for more info, or reply to this email to be added to the beta.
Now you can easily configure Interval actions to run on a schedule - no cron config required. We'll be rolling this feature out to existing users over the next few weeks; reply to this email to get early access.
BigInts can now be used within io.display.object and in action return values.