[Engine-devel] GUI widget for adding/removing entries

[Einav Cohen]

see attached: AFAIK, there are three types of adding-and-removing widget in the application:

(1) the one that exists in the customs properties section as well as the cluster policy.
in this widget:
- the "+" and "-" buttons appear on every row.
- row is "identified" by a selected item from a drop down.
- input controls in row: drop-down and text box (that appears upon selection of a non-empty value in the drop-down)

(2) the one that exists in the vNICs assignment part of the General section in the New VM dialog.
in this widget:
- the "+" appears only in the last row, "-" appears in all lines but the last row.
- row is "identified" by (what seems to be a) read-only label (I assume that this widget is 
built to be initially loaded to already contain a number of rows, as opposed to (1), which 
typically starts with no rows / initial "empty" row.
- input controls in row: drop-down

(3) the one that exists in the vNIC profiles section in the Add/Edit Network dialog
in this widget:
- the "+" and "-" buttons appear on every row.
- row is "identified" by a free-text string.
- input controls in row: text-box, check-box and drop-down.

so there are differences between the widgets other than the "+" and "-" buttons.
however, from ux perspective, it is important to keep the look-and-feel of all of them consistent.

technically (code-wise), I am not sure how easy it is to merge the three, due to the differences.
we can maybe think of creating a general adding-and-removing-entries widget, which can support 
"ordered" and "non-ordered" flavors (which will affect the "+"/"-" buttons appearance / exact 
behavior), and it will contain a collection of "abstract" row-widgets (and we will have several 
implementations of row-widgets for each needed functionality [(1), (2), (3)] with exact appearance / 
input controls / behavior/etc.), which may need to support a certain api (e.g. isRowEmpty(), get/set
Identifier(), etc.) in order to communicate appropriately with its "parent" adding-and-removing-entries 
widget.

thoughts?

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lior Vernia" <lvernia at redhat.com>
> To: "Itamar Heim" <iheim at redhat.com>
> Cc: "engine-devel" <engine-devel at ovirt.org>
> Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 4:44:47 AM
> Subject: Re: [Engine-devel] GUI widget for adding/removing entries
> 
> To my knowledge, such a widget existed only in two other places: custom
> properties and vNIC profiles in add/edit network dialog. In both of them
> the order wasn't important, in which case the new widget is probably
> preferable. If it is indeed preferable (Einav? Malini?), I could do some
> refactoring to have both of them use it.
> 
> On 10/10/13 09:02, Itamar Heim wrote:
> > On 10/10/2013 10:59 AM, Lior Vernia wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 09/10/13 23:34, Itamar Heim wrote:
> >>> On 10/09/2013 03:32 PM, Lior Vernia wrote:
> >>>> Of course, my bad. Attached is a screenshot of the add/edit VM dialog,
> >>>> note the vNIC part on the bottom half of the dialog.
> >>>
> >>> how is it different from the custom properties one?
> >>>
> >>
> >> Design-wise, there are a couple of small differences. There's only one
> >> button next to each row, plus if it's the last row or minus otherwise
> >> (so items can only be added at the end, as I replied to Malini order
> >> hasn't been important so far). A row appears as disabled until it is
> >> edited, and a disabled row is ignored when the view is flushed back to
> >> the model (e.g. when the user presses OK in the dialog).
> >>
> >> Code-wise, it's constructed to be reusable, which the custom properties
> >> widget wasn't :)
> > 
> > could we converge on one of them though?
> > 
> >>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 09/10/13 13:24, Einav Cohen wrote:
> >>>>> Hi Lior - can you please provide a screen-shot, so we will know which
> >>>>> widget
> >>>>> you are referring to?
> >>>>> will make it easier for people to decide if and where to use this
> >>>>> widget.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Many thanks!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ----
> >>>>> Regards,
> >>>>> Einav
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>>>> From: "Lior Vernia" <lvernia at redhat.com>
> >>>>>> To: "engine-devel" <engine-devel at ovirt.org>
> >>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2013 4:34:29 AM
> >>>>>> Subject: [Engine-devel] GUI widget for adding/removing entries
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Hello,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Lately a patch has been merged that introduces a widget for
> >>>>>> adding/removing entries (e.g. network interfaces when
> >>>>>> creating/editing a
> >>>>>> VM):
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> http://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/19530/
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> This kind of widgets is becoming common in oVirt, so the idea is to
> >>>>>> make
> >>>>>> adding one easy rather than copying & pasting code.
> >>>>>> AddRemoveRowWidget
> >>>>>> takes care of the plus/minus button logic, disabling an entry that
> >>>>>> hasn't been edited, and the arranging in rows.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> In order to use it, one is required to override a couple of abstract
> >>>>>> methods that are dependent upon the specific entry implementation. An
> >>>>>> example may be found in ProfilesInstanceTypeEditor, which handles
> >>>>>> adding/removing network interfaces in the new/edit VM dialog.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Yours, Lior.
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Engine-devel mailing list
> >>>>>> Engine-devel at ovirt.org
> >>>>>> http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/engine-devel
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Engine-devel mailing list
> >>>>>> Engine-devel at ovirt.org
> >>>>>> http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/engine-devel
> >>>
> > 
> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
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