Composition

[curran]

As a visualization author, I want to compose components from other visualizations, so that I can reuse them.

Idea for importing syntax: import { something } from './${username}/${slug}/${filename}';

[curran]

From https://medium.com/@currankelleher/introducing-vizhub-beta-2edc4a0a1908

By Composition, I using components from existing visualizations to create new visualizations. For example, one could rapidly prototype an interactive dashboard with multiple linked views by composing components from “The Basic Bar Chart”, “The Basic Scatter Plot”, and “The Basic Line Chart”, without re-implementing the components from scratch.

[curran]

We need to define the strategy for composing code across visualizations. Ideally you could take a component defined in one visualization and use it in another. Currently you can do this by copy-pasting files, but this feels like a workaround.

Desired Abilities:

• Import reusable modules from other visualizations
• Have the exported visualization still work with just vanilla tooling (Rollup)

Open Questions:

• What would the syntax be? import { scatterPlot } from '@curran/scatter-plot'?
• How would the build system need to be modified?
• How would these modules be pulled in?

[curran]

Idea: use Lerna in the exported .zip. This would allow use of imports that resemble familiar namespaced packages, like import { scatterPlot } from '@curran/scatter-plot'. There would be a package locally set up called @curran/scatter-plot I guess. Is this possible with lerna? Not sure...

This approach would result in a flat tree (like NPM post-v3), whereas the ./curran/scatter-plot approach would result in a deep tree with potentially multiple copies of the same imported thing (like NPM pre-v3).

[curran]

Tricky:

• Versioned imports
• Running old version should work - use transitively versioned imports
• Export needs to work (use Lerna?)

[curran]

Depends on #220 - we should really only import from specific revisions, otherwise things will break.