2017-07-06 DSpace 7 UI Working Group Meeting notes

Tim Donohue [9:54 AM]
@here: Our normal weekly DSpace 7 Developers Meeting is coming up at the top of the hour (in Slack #angular-ui and #rest-api). However, it's unclear to me who is around this week (as I know several folks are on vacation). Nonetheless, I'll provide some brief updates from OR2017, but it may be a very short meeting :wink:

Tim Donohue [10:01 AM]
@here: Ok, it's DSpace 7 Developers Meeting time. As noted above :point_up: , it may be a short meeting. But, I figured it's worth giving some quick updates from OR2017, and talk about next steps, etc

[10:01]
So, regarding OR2017, the conference was great (as always). My impression was the DSpace 7 talks/workshops went over well (but as I was presenting both, it's always possible I'm biased). Nonetheless, I heard positive feedback overall after both

[10:02]
The notes & resources from the first DSpace + Angular Workshop (taught by @art-lowel and I) are now available on the wiki at: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/OR2017+DSpace+Angular+Workshop (The workshop slidedeck and the DSpace 7 slidedeck are linked at the bottom of that page, as Resources)

[10:02]
This workshop will be re-run at the Georgetown DSpace Meeting on Aug 22-23 (likely in a shorter version though). But, all the resources are also there to "teach yourself" if individuals want to jump in and learn Angular

[10:03]
(The workshop itself is very much an "Intro to Angular development" as you'll see from the slides, etc)

[10:04]
I do also hope that we'll be able to repeat this workshop elsewhere in the future (e.g. other conferences/meetings, and/or even webinars) for anyone who misses these first few versions of it

[10:05]
That's the basic updates I had from OR2017. I'm not sure if @bollini (or others who were in Australia) have further notes they wish to share?

[10:06]
(Oh, and as a sidenote, in case you missed it, DSpace has a new logo: http://duraspace.org/articles/3224 I've been updating our logo in various places on the web this week)

Mark Wood [10:07 AM]
Such as here.

Andrea Bollini [10:07 AM]
exactly! and the stickers of the new logo go away very fast at OR

Tim Donohue [10:08 AM]
I do still have some more stickers leftover...and I will have them on me at the Georgetown DSpace Meeting (and anywhere else someone from DuraSpace attends in the coming months).

[10:09]
So, I think that's it for OR2017 updates.

[10:09]
I will also note that I made a minor update to our Waffle Board for the Angular UI this week: https://waffle.io/DSpace/dspace-angular Namely, I moved the "Upgrade to Angular 4" ticket to the top of the "Ready" column

[10:10]
I've also pinged @wwelling on that ticket (https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/83), as he previously expressed in interest in moving that forward in early July. He responded this morning to say he thinks he can get to it next week

Andrea Bollini [10:11 AM]
this is something that need to be done fast, as it is blocking the other developments if I understand correctly

Tim Donohue [10:12 AM]
Yes, that's correct. However, we are at a bit of a quiet period (Art is out for a few weeks, and I need to concentrate on getting 6.1 finished). So, I think his timeline should work, unless anyone else disagrees?

Giuseppe Digilio [10:13 AM]
next week it's reasonable

Andrea Bollini [10:14 AM]
it will be perfect if the work starts and is almost done next week

Tim Donohue [10:14 AM]
Sounds good then. I'll let William know, and also ask him to update us next week so we can reassign if necessary

Andrea Bollini [10:14 AM]
if there is a delay for any reason we probably need to revise the plan (edited)

Tim Donohue [10:14 AM]
Yes, if this is delayed further than that, maybe I (or someone else) can steal it. But, hopefully William gets to it next week as planned

Andrea Bollini [10:15 AM]
I have just some notes from the demo (angular + rest) that we have setup for the workshop that may require some tickets in the waffle board

[10:16]
1. the current recent submission components show all the pages... this mean that if you have 10 or more pages it becomes not usable

[10:17]
2. the current item page is broken when the item has not bitstreams in the original bundle. A blank page is shown

[10:18]
3. the community page shows all the collections instead to show only its child collections

Tim Donohue [10:18 AM]
@bollini : Are you willing to create a quick bug ticket (in GitHub/Waffle) for each of these (and even link to the bad behavior, if there's an obvious example of it on the demo site)?

Andrea Bollini [10:18 AM]
we have an example only for the 3rd

[10:19]
the other two were hidden changing the data :slightly_smiling_face:

[10:19]
I haven't used the waffle board up to now

Tim Donohue [10:19 AM]
OK, it sounds like you have enough info to quickly reproduce those others though...so providing the info on how to reproduce them should be enough

Andrea Bollini [10:20 AM]
I will check if I can open the bugs otherwise I will ping you here (edited)

Tim Donohue [10:20 AM]
You actually don't need to create tickets in Waffle. Waffle just uses GitHub issues behind the scenes. So, this board https://waffle.io/DSpace/dspace-angular is built from this list of issues: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues

[10:21]
So, if you simply create these bug tickets in GitHub issues, then they will appear on the Waffle board in the "backlog" column

Andrea Bollini [10:21 AM]
ok, I will do that

Tim Donohue [10:21 AM]
And then we (Art or I) can categorize them from there

[10:21]
thanks!

[10:22]
And as a note, Waffle also simply uses your GitHub login...so, you can also create the tickets in Waffle itself, but it's not needed...it still just results in creating GitHub issues :wink: Waffle is simply a different "view" of GitHub Issues

[10:22]
Are there any other updates for today? Or questions/comments?

Andrea Bollini [10:23 AM]
an important news about the angularui activities is the collaboration between 4Science and UHasselt

[10:23]
we have agreed to work on DSpace7, angular, to build the submission and workflow module

Tim Donohue [10:24 AM]
The announcement (for those who haven't seen it): http://www.4science.it/en/2017/06/20/english-4science-and-university-of-hasselt-together-for-dspace-7/

Andrea Bollini [10:24 AM]
we will probably next week share some mockup of the mydspace, edit item, workflow dashboard

[10:25]
this will happen on the public dspace wiki so that we can work all together collaboratively on that

Tim Donohue [10:25 AM]
@bollini : you might also consider sharing those mockups/drafts over to the #outreach group. They and/or DCAT might be good to get initial feedback from

[10:26]
#outreach channel is this group: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+7+UI+Outreach+Group

Andrea Bollini [10:27 AM]
@tdonohue do you know if we have a balsamiq license for the dspace wiki

Tim Donohue [10:27 AM]
This sounds wonderful, and I'm glad that both 4Science and Hasselt University see the benefit of making this effort public (from the very beginning) & giving back to DSpace 7!

[10:27]
We do have a balsamiq license, I believe. Let me check...I think it's already installed/enabled in the Wiki

[10:28]
@bollini : Yes, Balsamiq Mockups are already installed/enabled in our DuraSpace Wiki. So, you should be able to use it immediately. Let me know if you hit any issues though.

[10:29]
And we have an unlimited open source license, so all features of it should be enabled

[10:29]
Are there any other updates to share? Or final comments/questions for today? (If not, I think we'll close up the meeting early, unless there's anything to share in #rest-api , @bollini?)

Andrea Bollini [10:30 AM]
oh well, yes we can try to say something in the rest channel

Tim Donohue [10:30 AM]
Ok, let's jump over to the #rest-api channel briefly then. See you there

Tim Donohue [10:31 AM]
Hi all, we began today's DSpace 7 Developer meeting over in #angular-ui ... so, see that channel for brief updates from OR2017, and updates on Angular UI work this week (edited)

[10:31]
Now, moving on to REST API updates in this channel. @bollini, anything to add here for this week?

Andrea Bollini [10:32 AM]
we have two PRs that are already in the demo rest installation but not yet merged

[10:32]
https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1778

[10:33]
https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1783

Tim Donohue [10:34 AM]
1778: I suggested rebasing this PR against latest `master` in order to try and work out the Travis problems (as Travis is confused about the current branch status, as you noted). A simple rebase should fix this, I believe

[10:34]
After that, it looks fine to merge (to me). But, it'd be nice to get Travis to approve it fully

Andrea Bollini [10:35 AM]
ok so I will rebase 1778 and open a new PR that could be merged soon if travis give green light

Tim Donohue [10:35 AM]
Sounds good. You might be able to simply rebase in the existing PR (and do a `git push --force`). But if that doesn't work, a new PR is also fine)

Andrea Bollini [10:36 AM]
instead 1783 have two things that I don't like so far

Tim Donohue [10:36 AM]
I haven't had a chance to look at 1783...but, I'm perfect OK with going ahead and merging this to sync up `master` with the demo site...as it's shown to work on `master`

Andrea Bollini [10:37 AM]
1) I'm not sure that /retrieve is the right name for the endpoint as it is a verb

Tim Donohue [10:38 AM]
Yes, maybe `/retrieve` should be something like `/content`

Andrea Bollini [10:38 AM]
I have initially proposed it or /content and with @art-lowel we have decided for the first... but now I have changed my mind... so just want to check other opinion

Tim Donohue [10:39 AM]
I think I'd have a slight preference for /content myself

Andrea Bollini [10:39 AM]
2) the HEAD method is not yet implemented

[10:39]
two options here: we can merge as it is now and open issues to discuss/improve or we can wait

Tim Donohue [10:40 AM]
Despite all this, is it worth merging 1783 as-is (to sync it up with the demo site), and creating a new ticket/PR for the enhancements you want to make?

[10:40]
I think I lean towards merging as-is... otherwise the demo site is "out of sync" with master...and I'd rather the two be mostly "in sync"

Andrea Bollini [10:41 AM]
ok, if we merge 1783 now we will get also the 1778 in

Mark Wood [10:41 AM]
How long would it take to change the endpoint name? Changing names after exposing code is troublesome.

Andrea Bollini [10:41 AM]
it is a line change on the rest side

[10:42]
and it could require no changes on the angular side if it has been implemented following the "link"

[10:42]
but I'm not sure about that, maybe @atarix83 can help me tomorrow to check that

[10:43]
(the current angular demo shows the logo for the communities and collections)

Tim Donohue [10:43 AM]
Good question... yes, if it doesn't affect the Angular UI side, then maybe simply changing that name is worth doing now

Andrea Bollini [10:44 AM]
ok, we will check that tomorrow and change or not the endpoint name depending on the result. After that the 1783 will be merged

[10:44]
the HEAD stuff will go in a future issue

Tim Donohue [10:44 AM]
Sounds good

Andrea Bollini [10:45 AM]
ok, my plan for next week is to align the REST contract with the last developments

[10:46]
and if possible finalize the search endpoints (findTopCommunities, etc.) https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1726

Tim Donohue [10:47 AM]
Sounds great!

Andrea Bollini [10:47 AM]
once we have that I want to start to investigate on the authentication and the "creation" part so that we can work concretely on the submission and workflow

Tim Donohue [10:48 AM]
That makes sense as a next step. Authorization needs to fit in there somewhere as well, eventually

Andrea Bollini [10:49 AM]
yes but authorization is just a deal for the rest part. Authentication is more tricky for the interaction between angular and rest

[10:49]
so we want to have it soon

Mark Wood [10:50 AM]
authNZ should go in early. The longer you wait, the harder to get it right.

Tim Donohue [10:51 AM]
Yes, I'm more worried about putting AuthZ in later (as @mwood notes). I think AuthN comes first, yes (as it will be tricky). But, we need to start laying the groundwork for AuthZ early on as well, otherwise, it may turn out to be tricky if we don't know how it will be achieved at the REST API layer.

[10:51]
That said, I'm OK with starting submission/wokflow around or at the same time as AuthZ. I don't want to hold up the submission/workflow work

[10:52]
But, I don't want to delay AuthZ until the "end" :wink:

Andrea Bollini [10:52 AM]
oh well, yes we need to think about it. But... we already have AuthZ as it is embedded in the dspace-api (JAVA)

Mark Wood [10:53 AM]
And that is where it belongs. Current UIs do far too much of this themselves.

Tim Donohue [10:53 AM]
AuthZ is not entirely in the dspace-api right now...it mostly is... but there's some decisions being made at the UI level that need to now be in the *REST* level (or pushed down into dspace-api).

Andrea Bollini [10:54 AM]
so the question here is... are we able to improve AuthZ for dspace7 (I will be very happy to see work on this area but we need more people on board for that - maybe after dspace 6.1)

Mark Wood [10:54 AM]
That is the sort of thing which appeals to me. And I think that @hpottinger may be interested as well.

Tim Donohue [10:55 AM]
My suspicion is that improving AuthZ for DSpace 7 will require a team working hard on it. If folks like @mwood and @hpottinger are interested and have time to devote to it (i.e. their bosses agree to this), then it's doable. But, if not, we may have to stick with "what we have" for now.

[10:56]
So, I'd like to see specific time devoted towards this for DSpace 7....otherwise, I worry we could be taking on more than we should (as if specific time isn't devoted, and folks get busy, it could delay AuthZ work indefinitely)

[10:57]
And delaying AuthZ work until the end is a bad thing (as we already noted above) :wink: So, I'd like to see us avoid that risk, even if it means we have to decide to "go with the clunky AuthZ we currently have"

[10:57]
Just my opinion here

Mark Wood [10:57 AM]
Understood.

Tim Donohue [10:58 AM]
But once @hpottinger returns from his travels, and @mwood and he have a chance to talk to their bosses, maybe we'll get a better sense of whether this is doable for DSpace 7

[10:58]
Thanks for expressing interest here @mwood!

[10:59]
We are now at the top of the hour (wow, it turned out to be a rather full meeting!)

[10:59]
Any last thoughts/comments/questions?

Andrea Bollini [10:59 AM]
sorry :blush:

Tim Donohue [11:00 AM]
no problem...it's good to discuss all of this :wink:

Mark Wood [11:00 AM]
Yes

[11:00]
No further thoughts here.

Andrea Bollini [11:00 AM]
next week we should have an hangout call

[11:00]
I will be on the train at this time, so I could eventually join a slack chat

[11:00]
but not an hangout call

[11:01]
just to let you know

Tim Donohue [11:01 AM]
So, are you asking for a Slack chat next week?

Andrea Bollini [11:02 AM]
if all you don't mind I will try to attend (not sure as it depends on the connectivity)

[11:02]
but if we have a good number of participant to the hangout it could be nice too

Tim Donohue [11:02 AM]
I'll try and touch base with others. We could just do another Slack chat next week if most folks are still traveling (as I know Art is out for several weeks anyhow)

[11:03]
So, I'll let you all know... once everyone is back in the office, we'll get back to our schedule of alternating weeks between Slack & Google Hangouts. But, I know a good number of folks are traveling or on holiday this month

[11:04]
Thanks all for the updates, and we'll talk more on Slack during the week as necessary. I'll ping everyone on the meeting location for next week!