eSearch automatically appears in Choose Widget dialog

[AndrewTerwiel]

When its folder is copied to client\stemapp\widgets the eSearch widget automatically appears in the Choose Widget widget pool dialog without having to add a reference in list.json or config.json. How does that happen? And why don't other widgets behave like that?

[StanMcShinsky]

Andrew,

The node.js that you are running in the background for web appbuilder is a listener that listens for changes in a folder.

What widgets are you having problems with?

-Stan

[AndrewTerwiel]

Hi Stan,

I think that I was having problems with one of my widgets because I had an older version of WAB that didn't have a node.js that listened for folder changes. Does that make sense to you? Did the previous WAB not listen for folder changes?

[StanMcShinsky · Accepted solution]

Andrew,

From what I remember the previous versions all listened for folder changes. You may need to start the node.js startup.bat file again to see some changes. There may be something helpful in this post How to "refresh" a widget's code while editing it

-Stan

[JunshanLiu]

The previous WAB version has bug when watching the widgets folder's change. And, the list.json under widgets folder is for WAB that is embedded in portal.