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• The source code can be found on githubGitHub:   https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular
• There's a project board on waffle.ioGitHub:  https://wafflegithub.iocom/orgs/DSpace/dspace-angularprojects

Developer Resources

• Overview of the new Technology
• DSpace-Angular Workshop : this workshop was held at OR2017, but all materials are available freely online
  • Video Tutorial: A shorter version of this workshop was held as a tutorial at the North American User Group meeting at Georgetown University on Aug 23, 2017. This shorter Angular tutorial (which doesn't include hands-on activities) was recorded and made available at https://youtu.be/c4AJ8HeZzcw
• Official Angular for TypeScript Style Guide
• RxJS - creating new sequences or using existing sequences
• DSpace Wiki: TypeScript-Guideline

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These installation steps are outlined in the OR2018 Workshop or in README.md of the Angular UI project.

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• Currently the DSpace 7 UI is read-only (submit/edit/admin tools will be coming). Therefore, if you want test content in place, you'll need to do one of the following:
  • Option #1: Start with an install of  DSpace 6, create some communities, collections and archive some items. In this situation, you'll perform an "ant update" to DSpace 7.
  • Option #2: Create some AIPs from a DSpace 5 or 6 instance to load into DSpace 7 for testing.
• Compile/Install/Deploy the current master main (https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/tree/mastermain) using the normal DSpace install process ("mvn package" and "ant update" or "ant fresh_install"). 
  • This codebase is very similar to DSpace 6, but it includes no XMLUI or JSPUI, and has a new "dspace-spring-rest" project (which is the DSpace 7 REST API)
• Deploy the webapp dspace-springserver-rest as dspace-spring-rest webapp as /server (if you use another path, you may want to change the index.html file within the webapp)
• Start your servlet container and take a look into its logfiles
  • If you have problems deploying the webapp in cause for slf4j and log4j, it may be necessary to delete [dspace]/webapps/spring-rest/WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.22.jar
• Test if dspace-spring-rest was loaded successfully by opening it in a browser. You can compare it to the demo site:  https://dspace7api7.4sciencedspace.it/dspace-spring-restorg/server/
• Install dspace-angular. You can try it as described in the OR2017 DSpace Angular Workshop or take a look into the Readme.md in the dspace-angular git repository.

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Workflow

• Have a look at the project board

• Take an issue that’s in the ready section and has nobody assigned to it

• Assign yourself

• When you start working on it, move the issue to the “in progress” section

• Work on a separate branch for the issue on your fork

• When you’re ready, fire a pull request

• in the comments of the pull request, write something akin to “this PR connect’s to #{the ID of the issue}”. That way the issue will be moved automatically to the review column.

• When at least two people have reviewed and approved your PR, it can be merged in master.

• You can also help out by reviewing the pull requests of other people

• Please keep an eye on your pull request afterwards, the reviewers may have questions or comments about it, or ask you to tackle things in a different way, before they can approve it

• Most discussions about the task or the pull request can happen through the github & project board comments.

• If it’s more complex you can bring it up in one of these meetings.

• After your Pull Request has been merged, drag the issue to the done column on the project board. (this can also be automated by adding “this merge closes #{the id of the issue}” in the merge comment.

• If you've claimed an issue, but can't work on it for some reason, please remember to unassign yourself and put it back in the "ready" column so someone else can take over.

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• Before firing a PR, always ensure your code works on the server (disable javascript in your browser and see if it still works) as well as the client, and that it works with the AoT build (npm yarn run start) as well as the webpack build (npm yarn run watch:dev)
• Keep adaptability in mind. An institution installing DSpace will often want to modify a few things about the UI. The easier we can make that, the better. Therefore keep your components small (divide them in to sub-components), make sub-modules for coherent functionality, use SASS variables, etc.
• We agreed to remove the concept of Communities from the UI. They should be called Collections as well. The decision to remove the concept of Communities from the UI was reversed in the meeting of April 13th

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• The state in this application is managed by ngrx. 
• Using it properly requires some discipline from developers and reviewers.
• If you're new to redux or ngrx, take a look at the resources on the technology page
• Anything that's dynamic about the application is called a state change, and should be saved in the store. 
• That means a boolean that saves if the navigation is open or closed, or a list of DSpace Objects from the backend, anything that can change as the application runs.
• Every state change should be defined as an action. in a file called ${feature-name}-actions.ts. e.g. host-window.actions.ts
  An action definition consists of 
  • a type, in the format dspace/feature-name/ACTION-NAME, added to an ActionTypes object.
    • e.g. dspace/host-window/RESIZE 
  • a class to represent the action, that takes the components of the payload as the parameters of its constructor
    • e.g. HostWindowResizeAction
• The effect of each action on the state should be defined in the reducer, in a file called ${feature-name}-reducer.ts. e.g. host-window.reducer.ts
  • keep in mind that a reducer shouldn't modify the previous state in any way. You can test for this using deep-freeze.
• If an action is be the source of another action, that relation is described in an effect.
  • e.g. submitting the login form dispatches a LOGIN_REQUEST action, with the user's credentials as its payload.
  • an AuthorizationEffect class listens for that action, and when it occurs it calls the rest api with those login credentials 
  • if the REST API answers positively, the AuthorizationEffect dispatches a new LOGIN_SUCESS action, with the token that was returned.
  • if the REST API returns an error, the AuthorizationEffect dispatches a new LOGIN_ERROR action, with the error message that was returned.
• All reducers need to be added to a single reducer aggregator file per module before they can be used
• The same needs to happen for effect files

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• In the component I specify collection$. The dollar is a convention to indicate an observable

• In the OnInit: this.collection$ = this.cds.findAll();

• And then in the template, handle the different cases: dedicated messages for isLoading and hasFailed and the actual data for hasSucceeded 

  • of course in a more realistic scenario you might send the error to a notification service instead of handling it yourself

• In the template I use an ng-container and the async pipe to unwrap the observable: every time the observable changes the contents of this block will be re-rendered, and collectionRD will have the latest value

• The question marks check for null or undefined: the rest of the statement won't be executed unless that variable before the question mark has a value.

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