Naming convention for User Interface Extension Points

[tmortagne]

My point is that it’s not because you define a macros.vm that you have to do any kind of synchronization. Here the problem is specific to some livetable macros being redefined in the flamingo skin.

[vmassol]

@tmortagne

Here the problem is specific to some livetable macros being redefined in the flamingo skin.

which is the topic of this discussion

[mflorea]

@vmassol

MO everything we see in the UI is the flamingo skin and there’s no need to have a “common” set of templates because I don’t think that it makes sense (the concept of “common” doesn’t exist). As I said above, anyone wanting to create a new skin would either extend the flamingo skin and make the modifications they want by overriding stuff or create a new skin from scratch by copying the template files in another directory and refactoring for their needs.

Yes, but what do we do with the generic “flamingo” UIXP when we move to a new skin (even based on Flamingo), if we do 1? The new skin will have its own versions of these UIXP. I guess we’ll have to rely on aliases?

[vmassol]

@mflorea

Yes, but what do we do with the generic “flamingo” UIXP when we move to a new skin (even based on Flamingo), if we do 1? The new skin will have its own versions of these UIXP. I guess we’ll have to rely on aliases ?

Ah you mean about the id for the UIXPs? For me if we decide to merge platform-web and skin, it just becomes templates and we should use the template id. That allows to have some id independent of the skin name. We would move them all in a xwiki-platform-template module. We would also probably remove xwiki-platform-web and have xwiki-platform-flamingo depend on xwiki-platform-template.

WDYT?

[vmassol]

@mflorea

I guess we’ll have to rely on aliases ?

More generally speaking we do need aliases for UIXPs: Loading...

[mleduc]

The UIXP naming convention is now documented. Thank you for your feedback.

Existing UIXP with ids that don’t conform to the convention will need to be updated only once http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-12982 is closed.

[mflorea]

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately I haven’t followed this discussion till the end. I’m fine with the naming convention for UIXP but I have a small problem with the naming convention for the UIX:

The User Interface Extensions (UIXs) contributing to an UIXP must follow the following pattern:

<groupId>.<moduleName>.<uixpQualifier>(.<uixQualifier>) where:

• <uixpQualifier>: reuse the uixpQualifier of the UIXP where the UIX contributes.

Examples of UIX contributing to the org.xwiki.platform.user.profile.menu UIXP:
org.xwiki.platform.notifications.menu

I find org.xwiki.platform.notifications.menu confusing. It’s not clear that this is adding an entry to the user profile menu. My point is that in some cases the UIXP module name is important in identifying the UIXP. The uixpQualifier is often very generic:

• menu, which menu? (org.xwiki.platform.user.profile.menu)
• title.before, which title? (org.xwiki.platform.template.title.before)
• content, what content? (org.xwiki.plaftorm.menu.content)
• head, which head? (org.xwiki.platform.html.head)

I propose to make the rule a bit more relaxed:

<groupId>.<moduleName>.<uixQualifier>

where uixQualifier can be the uixpQualifier, if it’s specific enough, or uixpModuleName.uixpQualifier or something else that better expresses the UIXP that this UIX contributes to. Basically I would enforce only the <groupId>.<moduleName>. prefix which for me is the most important part in order to avoid conflicts between different UIXs.

WDYT?

[vmassol]

@mflorea I see at https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices#HUserInterfaceExtensionPointNaming that there can be several <uixpQualifier> elements and there are some examples given:

Examples of UIX contributing to the org.xwiki.platform.user.profile.menu UIXP:
org.xwiki.platform.notifications.menu
org.xwiki.platform.user.profile.menu.userMembership
org.xwiki.platform.user.profile.menu.userNetwork

Thus, using org.xwiki.platform.notifications.menu is not mandated and it could as well have been org.xwiki.platform.notifications.menu.userProfile, no?

It’s true that the doc says:

• : optional, used only in case of ambiguity, for instance if the UIX is declared in the same module as the UIXP, or if several UIX are declared in the same module. Single camel case identifier.

And thus it only lists 2 cases of ambiguity and the one discussed here is not listed.

So I see several choices:

• Do as you suggested. Cons: less precise and more subject to interpretation
• Use the uixQualifier to remove the ambiguity, as with org.xwiki.platform.notifications.menu.userProfile
• Use the full UIXP suffix (removing just the groupId, ie user.profile.menu) → org.xwiki.platform.notifications.user.profile.menu

WDYT? cc @mleduc who started this thread.

Thx

[mflorea]

@vmassol

Use the full UIXP suffix (removing just the groupId, ie user.profile.menu) → org.xwiki.platform.notifications.user.profile.menu

I’d be in favor of this.

Thanks,
Marius