include helpers don't work when used twice in the same dir

[jcheng5]

From Discord thread: https://discord.com/channels/1109483223987277844/1148651437820231710

Basically, if you use two (or more?) of the include helpers (ui.include_js, ui.include_css, etc.) pointing to files in the same directory, only one of them actually succeeds. The others 404.

shinylive repro link

[pieterjanvc]

Hello,

Any updates on this? I'm facing the same issue and how it can be fixed soon. (the workaround is good for now though, but it took me ages to find this post and spent debugging in vain)

Thanks!

[rkaramc]

Hi,
Problem occurs because maybe_copy_files(path, include_files) is dropping the tmpdir before copying the file at path to it.

py-shiny/shiny/ui/_include_helpers.py

Lines 215 to 216 in 33c8c79

	def maybe_copy_files(path: Path | str, include_files: bool) -> tuple[str, str]:
	hash = get_hash(path, include_files)

py-shiny/shiny/ui/_include_helpers.py

Lines 228 to 230 in 33c8c79

	# Otherwise, make sure we have a clean slate
	if os.path.exists(tmpdir):
	shutil.rmtree(tmpdir)

Related issue at #1427 (comment)_. @Konkrad fixed it by placing each file in its own directory.

I fixed the issue by placing the files all in a single directory, but then calling ui.include_js(path, method="link_files") for each file. Here, the multiple calls to include_js are redundant, as the directory and it's children are copied multiple times. However, this redundancy is necessary to create the script tags for each file to be included.

My initial approach was to patch maybe_copy_file to comment out the call to shutil.rmtree on line 230. Worked fine, but this seemed to be over-kill! A better approach may be to rm only the file being included. Or to allow a list of files to be sent to include_js.

Hope this helps!

[rkaramc]

Update to the above... another approach...

I added a __init__.js to the js directory - all it contains are import statements for each of the other js files. Then called ui.include_js("js/__init__.py", method="link_files"). So there is only one call to ui.include_js, and the js directory and it's files are not being rmtree'ed and copied over repeatedly.