Improve multi-create workflow for almost pure and binary relationships

[jrchudy]

This issue focuses on association tables that are almost pure and binary. These association tables have 2 foreign keys and some static columns. A good example of this is the Protocol_Author table in atlas-d2k. We want to be able to create rows using the modal interface but also need a way to allow for setting values for these associated rows after selections have been made in the modal.

To improve this workflow, we are considering changing what the Add records button does on record page for inbound foreign keys when certain criteria are met. If the association table has 5 or less static columns (non foreign key), we will trigger the following alternate workflow. Currently for adding protocol author associations, add records opens recordedit app with only 1 row and the "author" value is empty.

Proposed workflow change:

1. Click "Add records"

   

2. A modal for selecting "Authors" will show

   

3. After clicking "Save" in the modal, recordedit app will open in a new tab with the selected authors filled in

   

4. After clicking "Save" in the modal, the workflow remains the same. The user will be shown the "resultset" view of recordedit app.

Notes:

The user can fill in any values for the "static" fields and the foreign key values for authors can still be changed. Once the user submits, the original record page on focus will refresh the values in the protocol author table.

The change here is to make a related table in record app have the pure and binary association picker before navigating to recordedit with filled in foreign key fields. The other features of record app will remain the same as if the related table is an inbound foreign key (see the image under point 1 above). This means the other actions in the section header will continue to be "Bulk edit" (editing the association table, Protocol_Author in the example) and "Explore" (showing the Protocol authors for this record in recordset). Meaning "Link records" and "Unlink records" won't be added as action buttons since those are only meant for pure and binary associations. Also means the buttons in the actions column for each individual row will remain "Edit" and "Delete" for the association table.

Other Notes:

• This feature will automatically trigger when the table is an association table (only 2 foreign keys, both outbound) and there are 5 or less other static columns (non foreign key columns)
• the modal picker for associating rows will grey out previous entries if both the main table and leaf table foreign keys are to be unique.
• the save button in the modal should be changed to "submit"

[jrchudy]

We discussed changing the above workflow to the following for adding rows to an association table when the pair of foreign keys are a unique relation (1 association table entry for X main entity and Y leaf entity pair) and non-unique (N association table entries for X main entity and Y leaf entity pair):

1. Start on record app like above and click "Add Records"
2. Recordedit is opened in a new tab with an association picker modal shown on top of the recordedit inputs on page load
3. After selections are made, click "Continue" to use those selections to fill in recordedit forms
4. More forms can be added using "Add more" which will show the association picker again a. in the case that the pair of foreign keys are a "unique" relation, this modal will show selected rows from step 2 as "greyed" out since they can't be chosen again
5. Click "Save" to add the new selections to the form
6. Finish filling in the forms and click submit. When closing the recordedit tab that should be showing the resultset view, the record app will refresh to show the added rows

Notes:

• "Add more" will add more rows and not allow "changing" existing rows regardless of uniqueness
  • By default, add more will use default initial values
  • add property to annotation to allow for cloning values instead of using defaults initial values
    • separate issue to allow clone from any form
• Continuation of 4b from above, should initial association picker in recordedit app show rows "disabled" that are already associated for the unique relation case?
  • we are doing this in pure and binary in record app
  • yes we should in the modal picker on load AND when "add more" is clicked
  • we don't do this for foreign key popup in recordedit app
    • this "validation" is handled at submission by ermrest with an error message that points to the offending record
    • Bug: current error message only shows 1 record link when multiple could be offending
• For non-unique case, How do we add multiple rows at once for 1 value?
  • with these changes, we can add 1 more row, then use clone feature to create X more with that same value
• clone will not change from what it was doing before, if a foreign key field is meant to be unique, clone will allow that value to be cloned
  • clone will not copy the values that are intended to by unique
• If the user wants to add more after finalizing recordedit input, they can start from record page and the same process above is used
• Editing the data for the association table
  • Starting from record page, using bulk edit will show the bulk edit recordedit view with no changes since we can't "add new forms" in edit mode of recordedit app

[jrchudy]

This feature changes the recordedit app workflow only in the entry/create context, so where we add this configuration in the annotations doesn't need to be contextualized. This configuration should communicate when this feature should be turned, which foreign keys are affected by it, and other configurable details (like using initial values or cloned values when clicking "add more").

Proposed annotation changes:

• table-config annotation
  • top level property name?
    • association_picker
    • should name include recordedit or entry in some way?
    • only applied to recordedit app so seems redundant
    • but we might want to have this the same name across annotations
  • keys for configuring how this association picker behaves
    • foreign_key_pair - the pair of foreignkey relationships that are used for prefill and loading the picker
    • array with each constraint name?
      • ['fk_from_protocolauthor_to_person', 'fk_from_protocolauthor_to_protocol']
      • Note: not the actual names constraint names in the model
    • Can this have 2 pairs of keys? would we ever want to show 2 pickers?
    • is_unique - might not be necessary since our code can determine this
    • add_more_clone - whether add more will clone from an existing form or use the initial values
    • undefined, null, or false will use initial values
    • num_columns - when we should trigger this picker
    • probably not needed since defining the annotation means we want to use association picker for adding rows to this table

Do we want to be able to configure the heuristics used that show the modal when adding records from "add records" on record app?

• add_more_clone and num_columns could be general configuration properties for modifying the heuristics
• display annotation
  • add a property to this annotation to allow configuring the heuristics used to show this if no other annotation is defined
    • association_picker_recordedit
  • defined on catalog, schema, or table to configure the used heuristics