refactor(centralServer): faster dashboard item filtering by access policy

[jaskfla]

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Summary of Changes

Hello @jaskfla, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request introduces a significant performance enhancement to the central server's dashboard item filtering mechanism. By transitioning from an inefficient in-memory filtering approach to a highly optimized direct SQL query, the system can now retrieve permitted dashboard items much faster. This change streamlines data access and reduces processing overhead, leading to a more responsive user experience when dealing with dashboard item permissions.

Highlights

• Performance Improvement: The in-memory filtering of dashboard items based on access policy has been replaced with a direct SQL query, significantly improving performance.
• Database Optimization: The function now directly queries the database to retrieve only the permitted dashboard item IDs, avoiding the need to fetch all items and permission groups into memory.
• Code Refactoring: The implementation has been refactored to use SqlQuery for database interaction and includes JSDoc type definitions for better code clarity.

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Changelog

• packages/central-server/src/apiV2/dashboardItems/getPermittedDashboardItems.js
  • Replaced the hasSomePermissionGroupsAccess utility and in-memory filtering logic with a direct SQL query.
  • Introduced JSDoc type definitions for AccessPolicy, ModelRegistry, and DashboardItem for improved code readability and maintainability.
  • Utilized SqlQuery.record for safe binding of permission group names into the SQL query.
  • Optimized data retrieval by directly selecting distinct dashboard item IDs based on associated permission groups and the user's access policy.

Activity

• No human activity (comments, reviews, etc.) has been recorded on this pull request yet.

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[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request refactors the getPermittedDashboardItems function to improve performance by moving the filtering logic from JavaScript into a direct SQL query. This is an excellent change that should significantly speed up dashboard item filtering. The new SQL query is well-constructed. I've added one suggestion to simplify how the query parameters are bound, which will make the code a bit cleaner.

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3 agents reviewed this PR | 0 critical | 1 suggestion | 2 nitpicks

Nitpicks

File	Line	Agent	Comment
packages/central-server/src/apiV2/dashboardItems/getPermittedDashboardItems.js	35	Tupaia Conventions	The COALESCE(di.permission_group_ids, ARRAY[]::text[]) is redundant. In PostgreSQL, unnest(NULL::text[]) used in a CROSS JOIN LATERAL already returns zero rows, so rows with a NULL permission_group_ids are naturally excluded without the coalesce. Simplify to: CROSS JOIN LATERAL unnest(di.permissi...
packages/central-server/src/apiV2/dashboardItems/getPermittedDashboardItems.js	38	Tupaia Conventions	The alias pg for the permission_group table is potentially confusing: it is the conventional name of the node-postgres driver used throughout the project and resembles the PostgreSQL system-catalog prefix pg_*. A clearer alias such as perm_group would avoid ambiguity when reading or debug...

Local fix prompt (copy to your coding agent)

Fix these issues identified on the pull request. One commit per issue fixed.

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packages/central-server/src/apiV2/dashboardItems/getPermittedDashboardItems.js:18: Raw SQL with table/column references belongs in the model layer, not the API layer. Every other executeSql call in the codebase lives inside a model class (Survey.js, Entity.js, DashboardItem.js, etc.). Moving this query into a method on the DashboardItem model (e.g. models.dashboardItem.getPermittedIds(pgNames)) would keep schema details encapsulated and make the function here a thin orchestrator again — matching the established pattern.

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packages/central-server/src/apiV2/dashboardItems/getPermittedDashboardItems.js:35: The COALESCE(di.permission_group_ids, ARRAY[]::text[]) is redundant. In PostgreSQL, unnest(NULL::text[]) used in a CROSS JOIN LATERAL already returns zero rows, so rows with a NULL permission_group_ids are naturally excluded without the coalesce. Simplify to: CROSS JOIN LATERAL unnest(di.permission_group_ids) AS pg_id

The alias pg for the permission_group table is potentially confusing: it is the conventional name of the node-postgres driver used throughout the project and resembles the PostgreSQL system-catalog prefix pg_*. A clearer alias such as perm_group would avoid ambiguity when reading or debugging the query.

[tcaiger]

LGTM