Any Switch handling of empty text values about rgthree-comfy

[rgthree]

Hmmm. I'm honestly a little conflicted. The Any Switch was really built to be used with muting. So, if you didn't want an empty string to be chosen, you would mute that node.

It is true that I added support for an empty Context being skipped if passed in (at least for the Context Switch, not sure if it works that way for the Any Switch if using Contexts). But I worry a bit about changing the behavior here, especially now that it's been out for so long...

While empty string may seem to make sense, I could see someone who uses an empty string as the last value so it always passes a valid string if others a muted. I could also think this opens the question up to empty lists being ignored, or a 0 number, etc.

For now, I think I'm erring on the side of not changing the existing behavior and having it rely on muting as the primary switching.

[rgthree]

8c92a8a adds support for dynamic number of inputs to Any Switch!

[gshawn3]

Oh, I also meant to mention: With the recent commit 45781c3, Context Switch nodes now support a dynamic number of inputs. That's a nice upgrade!

This would also be a very useful feature for the Any Switch node. I think that's the only way the current node can still be improved, if it started with just two inputs and then added/removed inputs dynamically as needed.

[rgthree]

Separately, dynamic inputs for the any switch should be easy. Good idea

[gshawn3]

Hmmm. I'm honestly a little conflicted. The Any Switch was really built to be used with muting. So, if you didn't want an empty string to be chosen, you would mute that node.

It is true that I added support for an empty Context being skipped if passed in (at least for the Context Switch, not sure if it works that way for the Any Switch if using Contexts). But I worry a bit about changing the behavior here, especially now that it's been out for so long...

While empty string may seem to make sense, I could see someone who uses an empty string as the last value so it always passes a valid string if others a muted. I could also think this opens the question up to empty lists being ignored, or a 0 number, etc.

For now, I think I'm erring on the side of not changing the existing behavior and having it rely on muting as the primary switching.

That makes sense and it's probably what I would do as well, considering the node has been out for a while and this change would break backwards compatibility.

Thank you for implementing dynamic number of inputs!

[gshawn3]

I think this is worth documenting here, in case it's useful to someone in the future:

With the dynamic number of inputs feature, the Any Switch node now prunes its inputs whenever any connections are changed. When determining whether an input should be pruned, the node checks if that input has a link:

rgthree-comfy/src_web/comfyui/utils_inputs_outputs.ts

Line 6 in 8c92a8a

if (!node.inputs[i]?.link) {

If like me, you use the Any Switch extensively with "virtual" links such as those created by Anything Everywhere, that will cause those inputs to be dropped. You'll need to add an extra condition or two at the line above.