2017-01-12 DSpace 7 UI Working Group Meeting notes

Date

12 Jan 2017

Since the last meeting most of the setup tasks have been done
William added an Ahead of Time (AoT) build
- it's a build process that is used in production and does things like compiling templates ahead of time, and remove unused dependency code, so the amount of javascript that the client needs to download to start working is much smaller.
- But it takes a lot longer to build, that's why we still have a separate webpack build for development.
Giuseppe & Matteo added a PR for unit tests

Once merged, unit test are needed for contributions
End-2-end tests are encouraged but not required
There is a guide on writing tests for angular applications on the angular site: https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/guide/testing.html

The first set of tasks for the browse workpackage has been added to the waffle board
- focused on the models: to create them and to get them from the server
Art added mock REST endpoints
- Not complete or entirely accurate yet, just enough to do some tests on deserialization
- This should be enhanced as REST API gets built/updated
- e.g. https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/blob/master/src/backend/collections.ts
Documentation enhancements. How to get started, etc

Compatibility with angular universal has been verified: it works fine.
Opening and closing the header menu has been rewritten using Redux.
- This has already been merged
- An explanation of the parts can be found on the PR for now
- There will be another update next week, afterwards the explanation will move to the wiki
There's a browser extension for chrome and firefox called Redux Devtools:
- https://github.com/zalmoxisus/redux-devtools-extension
- It will show the entire history of the state of the application, what the initial state was, which actions were applied to it in which order, what their payloads were, what the diff was between the states and so on.

Tests with JSData
- Not a great fit. Typescript support isn't great (beta). Support for JSON API spec also not perfect.
- Recommend AGAINST using it for now.
- https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/28
Waffle Board

- Code Reviews / Testers would be helpful
Google Hangouts limits. Current hangout limited to 15. We had 13 attendees today.

Tim will set up DSpace Slack (next week, invites to all on this team first. Open up to all later on)
Tim will draft up call

William asks us to take a look at angular animations. It is getting to a point were we could consider using it.
- https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/guide/animations.html