Sharing links does not work - Event or workflow details not part of the URL anymore

[Rillke]

Describe the bug
In the old Angular.js Admin UI when you open an event detail, or workflow detail, the state ist reflected in the URL. This isn't the case in the new Admin UI Picard, therefore sharing links to event details is not possible anymore.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to https://picard.vm2.elan.codes/admin-ui/index.html
2. Log in (admin / opencast)
3. Click the event details icon.
4. The URL in the browser's address bar is still https://picard.vm2.elan.codes/admin-ui/index.html - therefore you can't share a link to this specific state of the admin UI. This was possible with the Angular.js Admin UI, for instance: https://stable.opencast.org/admin-ng/index.html#!/events/events?storage=%7B%22pagination%22:%7B%22events%22:%7B%22resume%22:false,%22limit%22:100,%22offset%22:0%7D,%22series%22:%7B%22resume%22:false,%22limit%22:10,%22offset%22:0%7D,%22users%22:%7B%22resume%22:false,%22limit%22:100,%22offset%22:0%7D,%22jobs%22:%7B%22resume%22:false,%22limit%22:100,%22offset%22:0%7D%7D,%22sorter%22:%7B%22events%22:%7B%22title%22:%7B%22name%22:%22title%22,%22priority%22:0,%22order%22:%22ASC%22%7D%7D,%22series%22:%7B%22title%22:%7B%22name%22:%22title%22,%22priority%22:0,%22order%22:%22ASC%22%7D%7D,%22users%22:%7B%22name%22:%7B%22name%22:%22name%22,%22priority%22:0,%22order%22:%22ASC%22%7D%7D,%22jobs%22:%7B%22id%22:%7B%22name%22:%22id%22,%22priority%22:0,%22order%22:%22ASC%22%7D%7D%7D%7D&modal=event-details&tab=metadata&resourceId=ID-3d-print

[mwuttke]

I can confirm this error for opencast version 14.4.

If you want to look at the progress of a workflow in real time in the Admin UI under Actions -> Workflows -> Details, the view remains static. I.e., the current state of processing is displayed when the page is called. The display does not automatically switch to the next step when a step has been successfully completed.

[Arnei]

@mwuttke The problem you are describing is different from the one Rillke described initially. I'll open a new issue for it.

[JulianKniephoff]

@Arnei asked me for help estimating this for the "Admin-UI Showstopper" project, and I finally got round to it.

The answer is, as usual, "it depends."

There is a relatively straightforward way to mirror certain bits of the application state in the URL using the redux-persist module we already use.

For the event modal, the relevant info is already part of said application state (managed by Redux) and we can probably put it in the URL in ~3h. So technically, that's the estimate for this specific issue.

I presume people would want this at least for series as well, maybe other modals, and looking at the mention of the old admin UI maybe even other stuff as well. Sadly, this is not a "just flip the global switch" situation; the 6h above will produce some work we can reuse for other state, but the overlap is small.

The majority of the work will be to rejigger the relevant state into Redux. That should be rather simple, if annoying. I would say for putting one of the other "main table modals" (series, CAs, users, ...) into Redux and from there into the URL would cost us another 2–3h. There is a slight risk of it taking significantly longer due to weird code structure.

Another complication that could drive up the estimate is if we want to put state in the URL that already lives in localStorage or exists "close" to such state. In that case we will have to massage redux-persist a bit more and take a moment to think hard about the interactions between the two storages. There are some global concerns there, which I would want to have at least 5h for thinking through, and then it's once again a case-by-case thing of let's say 1–2h per "piece of state."

The stuff in the last paragraph is not necessary for the state in the "main table modals," though.

The good news is that we can attack this piecemeal. We can spend 3h to get events in, we can put 2 or 3 more hours in to try it for series, and if it doesn't work or takes longer, we still have events, etc. 🤷‍♀️

/cc @oas777 @snoesberger

[oas777]

Thanks, Julian. Are you going to tackle this? Or Arne? Asking for a friend in accounting ...

[JulianKniephoff]

It would probably make sense for me to take this, seeing as I know what I mean by all the stuff I wrote above. x)

[mtneug]

I'm not a big fan of doing the "accounting" in GitHub issues. Can I ask to keep the resource estimation, etc., out-of-band and focus here on the specific problem?

[oas777]

Yep, sorry.

[gasparuben]

hi guys, just to say that we are very interested in this feature. We have moved to Opencast 16 and we hit the issue. Thanks to @mtneug for the workaround. Despite that we will not move to Opencast 17, 18.. in the near future, it would be great if this functionality is there. Thank you All, Ruben

[oas777]

Hello @gasparuben, just so you know, the issue is not critical for ETH anymore, so we are unlikely to push this forward.