Received messages only contain the content

[jwaa]

Describe the bug
Within an AgentBrain the self.received_messages only contains the message content. This prevents the agent from knowing who send the message and to whom else it was send.

To Reproduce
Send a message from one agent to another. The receiving agent's self.received_messages is a list of the message content it received. See also this line in the AgentBrain.py

Expected behavior
To have the self.received_messages contain a list of Message objects (or a child type of it).

Screenshots
N/A

Stacktrace
N/A

Additional context
Bug found in the DASH project.

[Wouter1]

Yes one more vote for fixing this.
It's important to know especially who sent the message, for instance if you have more trust in some messages than in others

[jwaa]

@thaije To resolve this we can fill the send_messages with the actual Message object instead of its content on this line.

However, the Message class has public attributes exposed that allow MATRX users to alter the sender and recipient of the actual Message instance. So either we should hide them (e.g., setting them as a Property) or add a copy of the instance to the list instead of a reference. Or we can ofcourse just change the line and trust users not to do this.

What do you think?

[Wouter1]

Yes it's only logical to include the full Message object.

Message objects should be immutable.

[Wouter1]

I vote against "trust the user". It's not about trusting the user, but to avoid him making mistakes. imho good code by design prevents users making mistakes.

[thaije]

@Wouter1 thanks for notifying on the issue. It was already known that the current message system is not very intuitive (see #204), however this will put it higher on the priority list.

Issue #112 explains nicely why the message system is as it is now: we started off with a closed message system where users could only provide message content, but later we moved to a more open message system where users could extend the Message object to contain specific properties or extend the class itself. However it is now a bit of a mishmash between the two systems it seems.

I would also vote for messages containing the entire Message object with 3 required properties (content, from_id, to_id) that are immutable as Wouter suggests, and the ability for the user to add properties such as message.read, to put messages on read after they have been processed by the agent. Doing so also still allows users to use custom classes that extend the Message object with a number of custom properties by default that suit their needs.

[jwaa]

@Wouter1 @thaije Thanks for the input. I added this issue to the list in #112. I keep this issue open as it might receive priority over the redesign of the message system.