Nicholas Hobson

I'm trying to sort out how to pass a setall message to pattrstorage, providing a dictionary to be set across all slots.

I've tried sending a bang into the [dict] and connecting the first outlet to this message: "setall dict-name $1", but this just results in the word "dictionary" being saved into every slot.  

I see that the [dict] documentation says that sending a bang to the dict inlet sends "a reference to the dictionary" from the first outlet.  Is there some way to de-reference it?

For context, what I really want is a global dictionary to be stored in [pattrstorage], but it only seems possible to store it within each individual slot.  I can work with that, but I can't figure out how to update every slot when the dictionary's contents change.

I'm trying to sort out how to pass a setall message to pattrstorage, providing a dictionary to be set across all slots.

I've tried sending...

pattrstorage-setall-how-to-provide-a-dictionary-as-the-argument

I hope this help you understand what went wrong.

However I'm not sure what you call a slot (do you mean preset?), and if you want to store the reference to a dictionnary, or its content.

 message, as you construct it, will set the name of your dictionnary as the value of your 

 parameter for every preset. It will not save the content of that dictionnary.

About storing the content of a dict inside a pattrstorage, see here: 

https://cycling74.com/forums/storing-and-recalling-dictionaries-with-pattrstorage

Thank you kindly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.

I think I was looking to store the contents of the dictionary, rather than a reference to it (if it was just a reference, where would the data exist on patch load?).  Is this what the right-most setup in the example you provided is doing (i.e. [dict]->[prepend setall dict-name]? Or is that just a reference to a copy?

I read through the thread you linked, but I'm a bit out of my depth there.  I have a lot to learn.

In the end, I realized that since what I really want is a global dictionary, it doesn't make much sense to try to shoe-horn it into the pattrstorage.  I've changed my approach to manage the dictionary independently of the presets.  Still would be useful to know the correct way to store the contents.  

You're right, if your dict is global, so let's just store it as its own file, outside of pattrstorage.

What you can learn from the first patch in the provided link is that apparently you can actually store the content of a dict in pattrstorage by attaching the [dict] inlet to a [pattr] middle outlet. The [pattr] will apparently output the reference to that dict but it will actually restore its content as well.

pattrstorage setall: how to provide a dictionary as the argument