Project Ideas Improve Workbench TableView

Improve Workbench Table View

The goal of this project is to improve the retrieval (from the sqlite3 database) and display of scan-related data by the primary ScanCode Workbench ("SCWB") view -- the Table View.

Note: The issue URLs listed below are examples of open issues that relate to the goal of this project. There are many other similarly-related issues, and you might also come up with ideas/issues of your own as you become familiar with how the Table View works (and how you think it should work).

Possible Table View improvements could include, for example,

• Revise how the data is displayed in Table View columns so that:

  • Each column displays all of the relevant data, e.g., if the path in the Path column is very long, the data needs to wrap inside the column cell. This would enable a user to see all the data and to copy and paste easily when the need arises.
  • Each column -- particularly the Path column -- has a maximum width and does not "push" the remaining columns so far to the right that they are out of view.

• Improve the Table View filters -- located at the foot of each displayed column -- to filter by value rather than string/substring.

  • For example, if you want to filter the License Expression column to display records with a gpl-2.0 license expression, you probably do not want the displayed data to include strings of which gpl-2.0 is a substring, e.g., gpl-2.0-plus or lgpl-2.0.

• The Table View search function (upper right-hand corner) searches all fields, including those that the user has not selected for display. As a result, it can be unclear why certain records are included in the search results.

  • One solution: limit the search to fields/columns the user has selected for display.
  • Even better: enable the user to choose (e.g., with a radio button) whether or not to limit the search to selected fields/columns.

• Update the version of DataTables used by SCWB, which might include desirable features that are not provided by the DataTables version currently installed in SCWB.

  • This likely would also involve updating the versions of Electron and perhaps sqlite3, Sequelize and other packages used by SCWB.

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• Level
  • Intermediate
• Tech
  • NodeJS + Electron + DataTables + SQLite + CSS
• URLS
  • https://github.com/nexB/scancode-workbench/issues/445 (Extra Unnecessary Margins in Columns [Table View])
  • https://github.com/nexB/scancode-workbench/issues/436 (Reset SCWB Column Names to match SCTK JSON names)
  • https://github.com/nexB/scancode-workbench/issues/423 (Limit Table View search to selected columns)
  • https://github.com/nexB/scancode-workbench/issues/422 (Some Table View filters seem to use substrings rather than values)
  • https://github.com/nexB/scancode-workbench/issues/410 (Enable narrower display of Path column)
  • https://github.com/nexB/scancode-workbench/issues/307 (Improve filter generation speed)
• Mentors
  • @johnmhoran https://github.com/johnmhoran