2018-02-08 DSpace 7 Working Group Meeting notes

Date

08 Feb 2018

Discussion (combined Angular UI & REST meeting)

Attendees

• Andrea Bollini (4Science)
• Art Lowel (Atmire)
• Giuseppe Digilio (4Science)
• Patrick Trottier
• Tim Donohue
• Mark H. Wood
• Terrence W Brady
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker

Location: DSpace Meeting Room

Notes

• General Updates
  
  • Planning Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18brPF7cZy_UKyj97Ta44UJg5Z8OwJGi7PLoPJVz-g3g/edit?usp=sharing
    • Updated by Art & Andrea to current status
    • Tim shared with Steering yesterday. Not enough time left in Steering mtg for much discussion, but they plan to give feedback via email
  • OR2018: Both of our DSpace 7 Workshops were accepted.  So, we'll have both an Angular Workshop and a REST Workshop
• Angular UI Team updates (via Art)

  • Angular 5 upgrade is nearly ready to merge: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/214  Reviewed & approved by William Welling.

    • Patrick said his tests look good overall

    • Tim tested on Windows (during discussion). Looks to work
    • Art will merge after mtg.  (UPDATE: Done! PR merged)
  • Angular 5's Transfer State API: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/220  Also reviewed/approved by William
    • ACTION (Tim): Test that serverside rendering works correctly. Turn off Javascript  (UPDATE: Done! PR merged)
  • Art working on Search service UI.  Hopes to have an initial version ready to share by next week's meeting
  • Lotte has a PR for search page truncation: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/221
    • Art demoed this work via screensharing
    • Looks good overall. Some institutions might want to configure which fields are truncated (Art notes that's configurable)
    • Seems like a good first step. We can always improve later on (after merger) if folks run into issues or find things confusing.
  • Giuseppe is working on Authentication
    • Giuseppe demos the new Authentication/Login UI via screensharing. Art & Tim agree it looks great.
  • Giuseppe notes that Angular seems to have issues when a REST API returns a 200 response with an empty body.  Seems to be the HTTP client?
    • This occurs currently in dspace-angular in at least two places:
      • If a community/collection logo doesn't exist
      • Also occurs during successful authentication
    • Art notes that 204 response seems to be more appropriate if the body is empty: https://httpstatuses.com/204
      • This might be the most appropriate response for a community/collection without a logo, as logos are completely optional
    • Terry notes that, for authentication, maybe the response shouldn't be empty.  It might be helpful to pass back some info?
    • ACTION (Andrea or Giuseppe): Create a ticket for REST API.  A 200 response should never return an empty body. If there are situations where we feel the body should be empty, this should be a 204 Response.

• REST API Updates (via Andrea)
  • Per above REST API response discussion, Terry notes that he's seen issues with changing the response code in REST API:
    • Unable to locate Jira server for this macro. It may be due to Application Link configuration.
  • Not many REST API updates to share this week.
  • One ticket closed/merged:  Unable to locate Jira server for this macro. It may be due to Application Link configuration.
  • Tom provided some updates (via Slack) on PRs mentioned last week 

    • We’re working on the rebase of https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1915, https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1916 and https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1931

    • We’re also working on the Hibernate deprecation warnings in this branch https://github.com/atmire/DSpace/commits/DS-3741_hibernate-deprecation-fix This is almost ready.

  • Andrea has been looking around at how other REST APIs manage object states / move things through workflow
    • Looked at Amazon EC2...seems more simple than what we need
    • Also found this good overview of options: http://www.kennethlange.com/posts/Modeling-Workflows-in-REST-APIs.html
      • None of these options sound great. Andrea's also not sure he agrees with the author's conclusion in this blog post.
  • Terry notes he's got some questions about how the IntegrationTests work for Shibboleth auth: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1927/files#diff-20f035831f26ee5c523c5b8fc4f000e6R325
    • Terry demos shib auth via the HAL Browser.  It "works", but isn't perfect quite yet.
    • Terry has already pinged Tom around the IT tests
  • Terry plugs the upcoming DSpace Developer Show and Tell Meetings.  If you are interested, fill out the Doodle poll on the bottom of that page.
• Next Meeting will be Thurs, Feb 15 at 15:00UTC in DSpace Meeting Room