Fix help text column showing raw JSON for structured settings

[nicomiguelino]

Summary

screenly edge-app setting list printed the raw JSON of help_text for settings that use the structured help text format, instead of the human readable text. This extracts properties.help_text from the structured format before rendering the table.

Before

+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Name                   | Title                  | Value | Default value | Optional | Type   | Help text                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| enable_analytics       | Enable Analytics       |       | true          | Yes      | string | {"properties":{"display_order":0,"help_text":"Enable or disable Sentry and Google Analytics integrations."},"schema_version":1}                                                                                                                                                                                |
+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| style                  | Style                  |       | traditional   | Yes      | string | {"properties":{"display_order":4,"help_text":"Select the visual style for the clock.","options":[{"label":"Traditional","value":"traditional"},{"label":"Modern","value":"modern"},{"label":"Minimal","value":"minimal"}],"type":"select"},"schema_version":1}                                                 |
+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

After

+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Name                   | Title                  | Value | Default value | Optional | Type   | Help text                                                            |
+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| enable_analytics       | Enable Analytics       |       | true          | Yes      | string | Enable or disable Sentry and Google Analytics integrations.          |
+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| style                  | Style                  |       | traditional   | Yes      | string | Select the visual style for the clock.                               |
+------------------------+------------------------+-------+---------------+----------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

Plain string help_text values (e.g. override_locale, override_timezone) are unaffected.

Edge case

A structured help_text with no properties.help_text key now renders an empty cell instead of falling back to the raw JSON.

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The new behavior isn’t covered by existing tests and it also unnecessarily expands the public API surface (should be pub(crate) given current usage).

Once you've addressed the issues Copilot identified, you can request another Copilot review.

Pull request overview

This PR fixes screenly edge-app setting list human-readable table output so the “Help text” column shows the extracted properties.help_text string when the setting’s help_text is stored in the structured JSON schema, instead of printing the raw JSON.

Changes:

• Added a helper to extract displayable help text from the structured help-text JSON payload.
• Updated the EdgeAppSettings table formatter to apply the extraction logic for the help_text field when rendering human-readable output.

File summaries

File	Description
src/commands/mod.rs	Adjusts human-readable table rendering for help_text to display extracted text instead of raw JSON.
src/api/edge_app/setting.rs	Introduces a helper to extract properties.help_text from structured help text JSON.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Lite

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[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The change is small, targeted, includes a regression test, and cleanly falls back to the original help text when parsing fails.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 0 new
• Review effort level: Lite

[sergey-borovkov]

Approving — the fix is correct for the case it targets and I found no regression.

What I checked: extract_display_help_text only rewrites the cell when the value parses to a JSON object and properties.help_text is a string; every other input returns verbatim, so plain help texts and the HELP_TEXT_NAME_OVERRIDES settings are untouched. JSON output goes through the raw-value branch of format_value and is unaffected, and EdgeAppSettings::supports_csv() is false so the CSV branch is unreachable. Built the branch, ran the full suite (235 passed, including the new test) and cargo clippy --all-targets — clean.

Two non-blocking notes inline. The first is a real gap in this fix rather than a style point, and it's a couple of lines in the function this PR just added, so it may be worth folding in here rather than as a follow-up.

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The functional change is narrow and covered by a regression test, with only minor optional performance/maintainability nits noted.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Lite

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The functional change matches the stated behavior and is covered by tests; only a minor performance optimization was noted.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 1
• Review effort level: Lite

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

extract_display_help_text currently turns malformed structured schemas (e.g., "properties" not an object) into an empty cell, conflicting with existing code that expects those cases to render as raw JSON (per the warning in assign_setting_display_orders).

Once you've addressed the issues Copilot identified, you can request another Copilot review.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Lite

[Copilot]

🔵 Needs a closer look

extract_display_help_text currently returns an empty string for malformed-object inputs (when help_text is already a JSON object with invalid properties), which can silently drop information and should be made consistent with the raw-JSON fallback behavior.

Review details

Suppressed comments (1)

src/api/edge_app/setting.rs:233

• extract_display_help_text returns an empty string when the input is a JSON object with malformed properties (e.g., properties is a string/null). This happens because the Value::Object arm only matches when properties is not malformed, and the fallback arm returns String::new(), losing the original content; it also differs from the string-parsing branch which preserves the raw JSON in this case.

pub(crate) fn extract_display_help_text(help_text: &Value) -> String {
    match help_text {
        Value::Object(object) if !properties_are_malformed(object) => object
            .get("properties")
            .and_then(|properties| properties.get("help_text"))

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 0 new
• Review effort level: Lite

[salmanfarisvp]

As per slack discussion.