[Engine-devel] UI plugins - next steps

[Vojtech Szocs]

Hi guys,

here's my list of tasks that didn't make it into UI plugins yet. These tasks should be revisited and implemented in future patches. The list isn't sorted in any way, so feel free to comment or highlight specific tasks to raise their priority, or add your own tasks/ideas.

1. Pass proper (restapi-definition) entities to UI plugins, instead of simple "{entityId:<guidAsString>}" objects
   - using restapi-types mappers to map backend business entities to restapi-definition entities (Java POJOs generated from api.xsd via JAXB)
   - exporting restapi-definition entities for use with JavaScript (UI plugins), e.g. using gwt-exporter [1] (alternatively, we could use GWT deferred binding and do this ourselves)

2. showDialog API function should integrate with WebAdmin dialog infrastructure
   - shouldn't be too hard, need to create custom dialog PresenterWidget/View and bind it as non-singleton (just like other popups in oVirt GUI)

3. Extend existing WebAdmin dialogs - prototype Doron's proposal to extend Edit Cluster Policy dialog with custom options that would be passed to backend

4. Introduce form-based tabs - custom tab that would display key/value pairs organized in columns, just like in standard "General" sub tabs

5. Introduce table-based tabs - custom tab that would display grid (table) just like in standard main tabs, with API to add columns, set data, etc.

6. Improve api.addMainTabActionButton to allow different button vs. context menu item representations (only button, only menu item, both)

7. Add api.currentUserName and api.currentUserId API functions (these would return same data as with UserLogin event parameters)

8. Minor things: consider renaming UiInit to PluginInit (one-time plugin initialization, called only once, can do non-UI init stuff there as well), consider renaming api.ready to api.initialize (plugin indicates that infrastructure can proceed with initializing itself)

Regards,
Vojtech

[1] http://code.google.com/p/gwt-exporter/wiki/GettingStarted