2017-04-27 DSpace 7 UI Working Group Meeting notes

Tim Donohue [9:53 AM]
@here: Reminder that our DSpace 7 UI Working Group Mtg starts at the top of the hour here in Slack. As usual, the first 30mins is in #angular-ui and the second 30mins in #rest-api. https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+7+UI+Working+Group

Tim Donohue [10:01 AM]
@here: It's DSpace 7 UI meeting time. As usual, we'll kick off with Angular UI updates here. @art-lowel did you have any you wanted to start us off with?

[10:01]
(I recall you/Atmire are moving offices, but figured I'd ask)

[10:01]
And, I hope the office space move has gone well :wink:

[10:03]
Ok, looks like either @art-lowel isn't around yet, or is busy perhaps. Hopefully he'll pop in shortly

Art Lowel [10:03 AM]
I’m here, and I was trying to say something

[10:03]
but had some issues connecting to slack

Tim Donohue [10:04 AM]
Oh, ok, go ahead. Hopefully your connection behaves now

Art Lowel [10:04 AM]
hopefully not related to the new office :slightly_smiling_face:

[10:04]
No the move went well, but we only really finished putting the kitchen in today, so unfortunately I didn’t have time for dspace 7

Tim Donohue [10:05 AM]
Yes, makes sense. Food > DSpace :wink:

Art Lowel [10:05 AM]
Starting next week I will be able to contribute again

[10:06]
and I’ll first focus on getting a PR for those relationships out there

[10:06]
next: writing more tasks

Tim Donohue [10:07 AM]
Yes, in the meantime, for anyone who is looking to chip in, we do have a Collection Homepage task in "Ready" https://waffle.io/DSpace/dspace-angular

[10:07]
(And technically we also need a Community homepage, but it'd be pretty similar, just for Communities)

[10:09]
I will note here that I talked via Slack with @jcreel256 this past week. He mentioned that Texas A&M hopes to do a DSpace 7 Sprint in early June. While that is a month off, we should keep that in mind so they have tasks to work on...especially as we prep for OR2017 in late June.

[10:10]
Not sure if you wanted to mention anything more on that sprint, @jcreel256?

James Creel [10:10 AM]
Still need to talk to the repository librarian here to see what she's able to commit.

[10:11]
I'll arrange for us to do the planning earlier than usual.

Tim Donohue [10:11 AM]
Gotcha. Just wanted to let others know of the likelihood, so that we can make sure we can all help you with any prep/planning for the sprint. Thanks again!

James Creel [10:12 AM]
:slightly_smiling_face:

Tim Donohue [10:12 AM]
Were there any other Angular UI updates and/or questions that others wanted to share here?

[10:14]
Another task to mention here (which is somewhat on the "backburner") is the updating to Angular 4. If anyone has time/interest in digging a bit deeper into how that'd look, I saw that Angular 4.1 was just released recently.

[10:14]
recently as in *yesterday* actually

Art Lowel [10:15 AM]
Just looking at it now, I see that ngrx/platform is starting to get some documentation

[10:15]
https://github.com/ngrx/platform

[10:15]
(that is the angular 4 compatible version of ngrx)

[10:15]
no releases yet though (edited)

Tim Donohue [10:16 AM]
Aha, so that is likely a bit of a "blocker" for us in upgrading...we need them to release

Art Lowel [10:16 AM]
yes

[10:16]
however they did say they would also release 2.x version of their modules that would be compatible with angular 4

[10:17]
So you wouldn’t have to migrate to their new “platform” module if all you wanted was angular 4 compatibility

[10:17]
I’ll see if I can quickly find out the status of that

Tim Donohue [10:17 AM]
ok, yes, it'd be good to track what our "blockers" may be for Angular 4 in this ticket: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/83

Art Lowel [10:18 AM]
So yes v2.2.2 has been released

Tim Donohue [10:18 AM]
We could even update the initial description of that ticket with a checklist of "things we need to see updated/released" before we move to Angular 4

Art Lowel [10:18 AM]
and that is compatible now

[10:19]
so 2.2.2 = quickfix that removes warning

[10:19]
platform = next version of ngrx

Tim Donohue [10:20 AM]
So, it sounds like that's not a blocker, but we should perhaps have another ticket to upgrade/migrate to "next version of ngrx" once it is released?

Art Lowel [10:20 AM]
indeed

Tim Donohue [10:20 AM]
Could you create that ticket for us @art-lowel, since you've been tracking this more closely?

Art Lowel [10:20 AM]
I will

Tim Donohue [10:21 AM]
Thanks. I notice in ticket #83 (the Angular 4 ticket) it's also mentioned that universal-starter isn't compatible with Angular 4 yet. Is that a blocker or more of an annoyance? https://github.com/angular/universal-starter/issues/376

Art Lowel [10:22 AM]
When that ticket was created it was a blocker, because there wasn’t really a comparible project to ours that had already upgraded

[10:22]
by now it’s possible that it’s downgraded to an annoyance, I’ll have to look in to it again

Tim Donohue [10:24 AM]
Ok, yes, it's likely not super high priority, but it sounds like we need to do a more current analysis to determine what is left to "wait on" before we begin looking at upgrading to Angular 4. We should probably update that ticket with the running list: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/83

Art Lowel [10:24 AM]
I agree

Tim Donohue [10:25 AM]
Sounds good. This has been useful to at least understand a bit more of what needs to be looked at again...I don't think the upgrade to Angular 4 is an ASAP sort of thing, but if it's relatively easy / simplifies our dependencies, then we might as well do it sooner rather than later :wink:

Art Lowel [10:25 AM]
I’m afraid it won’t be relatiely easy (edited)

[10:26]
Universal has moved from a separate project to the core

[10:26]
and that’s a complicated part of the app, that needs to be re-examined

[10:26]
that’s why I wanted to wait for e.g. the universal-starter-project to do that for us

Tim Donohue [10:27 AM]
Yep, I understand that's the major change between Angular 2 -> 4. I was just hoping maybe it would mostly be a "find and replace" in our codebase. But, sounds like it might not be

Art Lowel [10:27 AM]
for most things it will be a find and replace

[10:27]
but those browser and node modules will need to be redesigned

Tim Donohue [10:28 AM]
Ok, good to know. If you find time to update that 83 ticket, any notes on likely "redesign" areas would also be welcome. It'd help us better scope the ticket & decide its priority

[10:29]
I noticed @wwelling had a few notes in that original ticket, but it sounds like we may want to have an updated list

[10:29]
In any case, we are nearing the end of our 1/2 hour here.

[10:30]
So, let's move this over to #rest-api channel and talk REST API updates now

Tim Donohue [10:31 AM]
@here: Ok, we're now into the second 1/2 hour, which means REST API updates. @bollini , would you like to lead us in some updates for this week? (edited)

Andrea Bollini [10:31 AM]
hi, how many here?

Terry Brady [10:31 AM]
Hello

Mark Wood [10:31 AM]
Hi

Nelson Torres [10:31 AM]
hi

Art Lowel [10:31 AM]
Hi

Andrea Bollini [10:32 AM]
ok, this week we have merged the two PRs discussed in the previous hangout call

[10:32]
endpoints:
- groups, eperson
- metadatafiedl, metadataschema

[10:33]
and we have an up & running instance of the new rest API here: http://dspace7.4science.it/dspace-spring-rest/

Tim Donohue [10:33 AM]
Glad to see that!

Terry Brady [10:34 AM]
Instance looks great. I have a question. Can the HAL browser expose the top-communities search option?

Andrea Bollini [10:34 AM]
the other ongoing tasks are:
- support for "search" on resources endpoints https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1726
- implemnetation of the search discovery endpoint

[10:35]
yes the implementation in 1726 is automatically exposed in the HAL browser

[10:35]
right now the "demo" is from the master so this endpoint is not exposed

Terry Brady [10:35 AM]
Thanks.

Tim Donohue [10:36 AM]
Is 1726 still in a "work in progress" state, or are you looking for reviewers/testers at this point?

Andrea Bollini [10:37 AM]
oh well... I like to receive feedback on the approach

[10:38]
I need to work on the reflection logic to make it more general, help will be welcome but anyway I plan to work on it in the next two weeks

Terry Brady [10:38 AM]
I will be glad to review/test. I hope to have some time next week.

[10:38]
I added myself as a reviewer

Andrea Bollini [10:39 AM]
once this functionality will be in place it will be very fast and easy to add "filter" options for existent endpoint (for instance searchByName in group, byEmail in the eperson, etc.)

[10:40]
my other plan (I'm late with that) is to add the endpoint for the browse functionalities so to use it as guidelines for the discover search implementation that @luizsan have started here https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1711

Tim Donohue [10:41 AM]
Sounds good, so that's another PR to expect (endpoint for browse) in the next few weeks?

[10:41]
Or are you enhancing 1711?

Andrea Bollini [10:41 AM]
no it will be a separate one

[10:42]
I will try to have it for the next meeting

Terry Brady [10:42 AM]
Will the browse PR introduce the logic that will allow an item to be constructed from either SOLR or the DB?

Andrea Bollini [10:43 AM]
yes and no. I plan to have the structure in place here but I prefer to make the changes (probably) required to the dspace-api in a later stage

[10:44]
you should expect an endpoint /discover/browse that list all the browse indexes available say author, titile, etc.

[10:45]
when you call /discover/browse/title an item with the metadata filled will be returned, right now from the DB as in the current browse system implementation

[10:46]
in a later step we can implement the retrieve of a metadata subset (predefined or configured via projection) from SOLR with the self link of the item

Tim Donohue [10:47 AM]
This all seems reasonable to me

Andrea Bollini [10:48 AM]
do you have other questions or updates on your side that you want to share?

Terry Brady [10:49 AM]
My attention is focused on some 6.1 stuff. I am eager to return to working on REST.

Andrea Bollini [10:49 AM]
yes 6.1 requires also lot of effort, I'm glad to all you that are working on it

Tim Donohue [10:49 AM]
With the recent PRs (and forthcoming ones), I'm assuming we're keeping our RestContract updated? https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract

Andrea Bollini [10:50 AM]
mmm... oops I forget to update with the latest merged pr

[10:50]
I will update it shortly

Tim Donohue [10:51 AM]
Yes, that's why I asked. It looks like the Contract hasn't been updated in a while :wink: No worries, and thanks!

[10:51]
Does anyone else here have updates / questions they'd like to discuss? Looks like we have a little extra time here

Terry Brady [10:52 AM]
None for now

Tim Donohue [10:54 AM]
Ok, while I have your attention, I will put in a plug for more help on DSpace 6.1 (as well). Our Committer team is rather "split" these days between this (excellent) DSpace 7 effort, and getting out a bug fix release for 6.0. If you or your team has available time to help on DSpace 6.1 (mostly testing/code reviews are needed on final PRs), please get in touch with me.

[10:54]
I'm hoping we can get 6.1 out the door quickly, as that'll help *several* of us jump over to help more on the DSpace 7 side of things :wink:

[10:56]
I think that's it for today then. We'll meet again next Thurs @ 15UTC in Google Hangouts. Look for the reminders on dspace-devel list next week. Thanks again to everyone here who is putting in effort/time on DSpace!