Can you modify a TiddlyHost wiki from two or more devices simultaneously?

#1

I created a password protected wiki on TiddlyHost. I enabled auto save option.

I then tried to edit the wiki from desktop and mobile at the same time, and I noticed that TW would get stuck on saving on one device. But if I close TW on any of the device, the save operation would behave normally.

Was it a fluke? Or TW cannot be edited from two places at the same time?

I understand that single file TW cannot be edited from multiple devices. But if you serve the TW from WebDav or TiddlyHost, is it still impossible?

Does NodeJS TW suffer from the same limitation?

#2

talha,

Tiddlyhost doesn’t have a way to “push” changes to the way the file is loaded on a device other than the one that made the change (nor does any server that I know of). So a hosted Tiddlywiki is different from, say, a shared google doc that pushes edits to all connected devices in real time.

So, auto-save could at most get each device to override the other’s recent changes. The recent update to Tiddlyhost has made accidental overwrites less easy, and surely that feature is what’s causing saves to get “stuck” when you’re trying to edit from two devices.

-Springer

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#3

According to the FAQ, there should be a message. But maybe it’s a message in the browser console?

#4

Yes, I have usually gotten a message. But my impression is that the message has not always come through, resulting in a kind of limbo after trying to save new changes from a stale browser tab. I haven’t been able to reproduce this, however.

#5

Thank you, @Springer

I tried editing a NodeJS TW from mobile and desktop simultaneously.

The changes synced to the server, but I had to ensure I refreshed each instance before starting to edit them. Otherwise, each instance was committing a stale copy to the server.

I should learn to live with a single instance TW otherwise, I would end up losing data.

#6

Do you mean literally at the same time? It takes a few seconds for a TW instance to communicate changes back to the server. What is your use-case where you will be firing off changes to your TW simultaneously from two different devices?

Also not clear what nodejs has to do with this, since the initial topic was TiddlyHost.

My tactic with services like TH is to designate one location as the editor-of-the day. All edits happen at one device. The other device would be opened for read-only. Then, if there’s a reason to switch, the first device is save, the second device is refreshed, and then changes occur at the second device.

But with node, you can make changes at any device as long as you edit different tiddlers.

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#7

I want to update my Journal TW from desktop and mobile. I want to keep adding entries to my Journal when I am away from my desktop.

Thank you so much for this clarification. I (we?) are so used to seamless syncs offered by apps like Notion and Google Docs that I kept blaming myself when I noticed peculiarities in TiddlyHost.

You shared some great hints, which led me to the following plan.

  1. Keep a TW on desktop
  2. Keep a separate TW on mobile (like using Tiddloid or TiddlyHost)
  3. Make sure Journal tiddlers on mobile get a different title like YYYY-0MM-0DD mobile
  4. After a few days, export tiddlers from mobile and import to desktop TW

Because desktop and mobile tiddlers will have different titles, they won’t overwrite each other on import. I can edit ViewTemplates to transclude entries from the mobile device in a day’s entry.