Contribute to the DSpace Development Fund
The newly established DSpace Development Fund supports the development of new features prioritized by DSpace Governance. For a list of planned features see the fund wiki page.
The DSpace UI developer team decided to implement the new user interface with the widely used Angular2 client side framework. In addition to delivering a more responsive user experience, client side frameworks allow for a more rapid development cycle. The UI code is built in TypeScript, a typed super set of JavaScript, that was developed specifically for the implementation of sizable web applications. In facts Angular2 itself is developed in TypeScript.
The UI works with the DSpace REST API to access and modify data. It relies on RxJS to manage control flow which is driven by the (asynchronous) communication between the two applications The @ngrx package helps maintain a predictable state representation.
The new UI uses Angular Universal to render initial page requests on the server side, which greatly improves the initial page load time. As a nice benefit, search engines requesting pages do not have to deal with client side page rendering. Crawlers working through a list of URLs will always be presented with a page rendered on the server.
Node.js is the server technology used with JavaScript web application and thus with Angular. As an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime, Node is designed to build scalable network applications like web based user interfaces.
Npm stands for Node Package Manager. In fact installation instruction for the user interface at GitHub essentially consist of the command 'npm install', followed by 'npm start' to start a local server.
Typescript
- The Prototype Wiki explains the rational for using typescript in ore detail
- The Official documentation for the TypeScript language includes links to sample code, as well as a live in-browser editor/samples.
Angular2
- Official Angular2 site - with documentation, quick start, and API references, and a style guide
- Angular @ GitHub - code base and place to submit issues
- Getting Started Video Tutorial by Deborah Kurata
- Angular Blog - updates and blog posts from the Angular team.
- Angular Forum - Google Discussion Group
- Scotch.io - article collection and HowTos
Other Packages
- RxJS - JavaScript implementation of ReactiveX, which describes itself as an API that combines the Observer pattern with iterators and functional programming. It facilitates the type of event/data driven programming that is common in web applications. The RxJS GitHub repo contains Resources and Links to Tutorials.; André Staltz wrote a good introduction to Reactive Programming
@ngrx is an implementation of Redux for Angular 2. The main Redux documentation describes the general concepts. Angular 2 — Introduction to Redux is an Angular specific how to. Getting Started with Redux is a 2h video course on egghead
ng2-translate - supports multilingual text display
Node.js and Npm
- node.js - official site
- npm - official site
- npm-check-updates - npm package dependency management
Angular Universal
- Official Angular Universal Site
- Here‘s a high level explanation
- Universal GitHub - with documentation and a few videos
- William Welling has a test project to experiment with Angular Universal.
Overview
Content Tools
All content on the LYRASIS Wiki is licensed under the CC BY (Attribution) license
, unless otherwise noted.