I can’t figure out how to select more than one item (or thing) with just one mouseclick.
If I want to delete 120 items with the letters “myitem00” in it, I have to search for “myitem00” and than I have to click on every single item in the provided list below (=120 times).
Is there a smarter way to handle this multiple selection?
If not maybe something like this could be integrated:
Out of curiousity, why do you need to delete 120 items at once? That seems like an unusual need that most people wouldn’t have.
It’s just my opinion, but being able to select/delete many entries from the main Items screen will cause havoc with people accidentally removing items they didn’t mean to delete and not realizing it. For system integrity, I think it’s better that you have to intentionally go into each item to delete it.
If you want to remove all of the items attached to a thing, you can do so on the thing page. Would that help?
ok, 120 items is really unusual but to select all searched (maybe 20) items at once could be helpfull.
just an example:
12 things (WiFi plugs)
every plug has many channels (called “rssi”, “power”, …)
i can simply create items for all available channels (btw. this makes it really simple to implement new things)
if I now want to delete all items linked to the channels “rssi” i could simply search for “rssi” (12 different things), click on “select all” and “delete” and all of them would be removed.
This is just a small and simple example. The number of items increases with the project size.
True but could maybe prevented by “do you really want to delete this 120 items: …” or by previously checked “expert mode” / “advanced”
True but some items aren’t attached to a thing (+ the example with “rssi”)
at last, it is not absolutely necessary, but it would make editing and correcting easier in some cases
I disagree. It’s very easy to accidentally include items that you don’t want to select while mindlessly clicking through a list to add them, or using a select-all feature. That happens all of the time with selections…it’s pretty much why the Recycle Bin and the Undo command exist in operating systems. Users tend to get overzealous and careless when clicking things. Having them confirm the removal of multiple items does nothing to prevent this, because they’re just acknowledging the action, not the items they’ve selected.
So what you would need is a popup for every item you select to say, “do you really want to include this in your selection?” And that would just be annoying.
I assume you’re talking about unbound items, but your RSSI item isn’t an example of that. Anything that’s reliant upon a channel is attached to a thing.
i fully agree. users do things without paying attention.
i edited my previous comment with
This is my last try to solve this problem 
I think the discussion is worth having, or I wouldn’t have responded at all. For me it’s just about unpacking what the need is and how best to solve it. If you feel strongly about it, you can submit a feature request in GitHub, and a developer will pick it up if they also think that it’s valuable.
What I’d probably suggest is not to modify the existing Items screen, but to have a sub-page that’s specifically for mass-deletion of items. Then it can be accompanied by an appropriate warning that this is unrecoverable. The issue I have is just with making it too easy to do that carelessly.
