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RailsStackview

This is not an out of the box solution, integrating it into your app will require some development.

The hardest part, for call-number browse, is typically arranging your call numbers somewhere so they can be accessed in sorted order.

RailsStackview contains the original stackview assets, arranged for the Rails asset pipeline. Along with some higher-level components. These higher-level have been created for my own use cases and needs; while I've tried to give a nod to future expandability, they haven't been created to be fully robust and configurable for all use cases. In this project, for a change, I've tried to be guided by keeping it simple and YAGNI.

My focused use case is 'shelf browse', browse through a very long list of ordered items, starting at a specified point in the middle.

Requirements

The Stackview code needs JQuery, so you should have JQuery loaded in your app.

This code is meant for integration with a Rails app. It does not assume Blacklight, although is usable with Blacklight.

Add it to your app like any other gem, by listing in the Gemfile.

Usage

Stackview assets are available.

To use the stackview assets directly, include them in your asset pipeline.

You can include just the original stackview JS and CSS:

# app/assets/javascripts/application.js
//= require jquery.stackview.js

# app/assets/stylesheets/application.css
*= require stackview/jquery.stackview.scss

Now Stackview will be available in your app, via the asset pipeline, using the documented stackview API. (eg $(something).stackView(something))

Or alternatley you can include all RailsStackview JS/CSS, which provides some support for higher level features, along with the original stackview assets:

# app/assets/javascripts/application.js
//= require rails_stackview

# app/assets/stylesheets/application.css
*= require rails_stackview

One additional feature included is an automatic application of stackview to any <div> with a data-stackview-init attribute, containing JSON serialization of stackview init arguments.

This can be convenient for integrating with Rails, letting you for instance specify your own rails controller as a data provider to stackview:

<%= content_tag("div", "",
    :id => "whatever_you_want",
    :class => "whatever you want",
    :data => {
        :stackview_init => {
            :id => 0,
            :url => your_route_helper(some_args),
            :search_type => "loc_sort_order"
        }
    })
%>

The data-stackview-init hash can be whatever you like, as initialization arguments for the original stackview.

Back-End Support: The StackviewDataController to feed data to stackview

The StackviewDataController is provided to feed data to a stackview UI, with the use case of 'call number browse', or starting at an arbitrary point in a very long list of items, and paging both back and forwards.

The current implementation of the StackviewDataController counts on a table of individual call numbers existing in your database. It is difficult to get the querries we need out of Solr directly, and we opted to create a duplicate 'denormalized' database table with exactly the info needed to support the front-end.

Once you've added rails_stackview to your Gemfile, you can install a migration into your app to create the stackview_call_numbers table, with:

bundle exec rake rails_stackview_engine:install:migrations

It is up to you to fill this table with call number data. If you use traject to index MARC to Solr, you can look at this example of how I handle creating the stackview_call_numbers table at the same time I do my Solr indexing

Here are the elements of the stackview_call_numbers table:

  • system_id (string), the primary key of the original item in your overall system, used for linking from stackview to your system.
  • sort_key (string), a sortable representation of your call number or other ordering. Used for sorting the stack. If you are using LC Call Numbers and populating this table in ruby, we suggest the Lcsort gem for turning a call number into a sortable representation. Some features will end up less confusing if sort_keys are unique, although they aren't required to be -- I append the bibID to the end of each sort_key, to make them unique even if two bibs share the same call number.
  • sort_key_display (string, optional), the original human-displayable call number, can be used for display.
  • title (string), title to use in stackview representation.
  • creator (string, optional), author to use in stackview representation.
  • pub_date (string, optional), publication year (as string) to use in stackview representation.
  • measurement_page_numeric (int, optional), page count, passed to stackview for represnetation width.
  • measurement_height_numeric (int, optional), item height (usually in cm), passed to stackview for representation height
  • shelfrank (int, optional), 1-100, passed to stackview for "heatmap" intensity coloring of representation. Normally a count of number of times checked out.
  • created_at (datetime, optional), can set to row creation date for your administrative convenience.
  • format: Passed to stackview to choose a format-specific view template, should be one of magic words from stackview's own source (case-sensitive, not entirely consistent): book Serial, Sound Recording, Video/Film, webpage. Also our own special plain format, which can also take a specific description etc plain:VHS. See more at "Custom Plain Format" below.
  • sort_key_type (string): Eventually we plan to support multiple separate call number runs, which will be identified by sort_key_type. We have the beginnings of such an architecture, but it may not be fully fleshed out and may have performance implications. For now recommend always setting this to the default, lc.

Once you've filled this database, you can use it with our Browser front-end, or you can construct your own stackview front-end telling stackview to use this to use this controller as a source for:

Add routing to the StackviewDataController in your own ./config/routes.rb

    get 'stackview_data/:call_number_type', :to => "stackview_data#fetch", :as => "stackview_data"

(That specific :as => 'stackview_data' is needed if you are using our Browser front-end)

When you initialize a stackview UI element, you have to tell it what item to start at, by giving it a sort_key (normalized sortable call number representation) value. One way to get a sort_key for a known item, is simply to look it up from the existing stackview_call_numbers table:

# may be nil if no such system_id recorded
origin_sort_key = StackviewCallNumber.where(:system_id => document.id).order("created_at").pluck(:sort_key).first

Now you can initialize a stackview UI element, using the RailsStackview feature to automatically init a stackview from a data-stackview-init attribute:

    <%= content_tag("div", "",
        :id => "my_stackview",
        :data => {
            :stackview_init => {
                :id => 0,
                :url => stackview_data_path("lc", :origin_sort_key => origin_sort_key),
                :search_type => "loc_sort_order"
            }
        })
    %>

If you pass an :origin_sort_key that doesn't actually exist in the database, the StackviewDataController will still put the user into the stacks at the closest point to that theoretical call number.

To set the link property on the JS objects passed to stackview, which will be used as the href on stackview item hyperlinks, set a lambda/proc as configuration, perhaps in an initializer. The proc gets the already constructed stackview hash as a parameter, and will be executed in the context of the controller so you can use controller methods, such as Rails route helpers. 

  StackviewDataController.set_config_for_type("default", {
    :link => lambda do |hash|
      catalog_path(hash["system_id"])
    end
  })

Above is similar to the default, which should work for at least some versions of Blacklight by default.

What's it doing then?

To use the current stackview API (as far as what it fetches from it's back-end), in a flexible and high-performance way, we do something a bit odd.

The URL fixes the controller to have an 'origin' you specify. Stackview, in "search_type: loc_sort_order" (stackview's terminology) will then send it negative and positive offsets as the user browses -- eg asking for items 10 to 20, or -25 to -35. The controller will use SQL OFFSET to page forwards and backwards around the origin. This ends up pretty performant, although it is odd.

The Stackview loc_sort_order mode is under-documented on stackview's site, but it's meant for 'infinite' scrolling both forwards and back around an origin. Stackview assumes you're initialize it to the actual i-index id where you want to start; but we set a "logical" id starting point of 0, and encode our actual origin in the URL instead. Then we can consider stackview's indexes to actually be offsets from our origin.

Weird, but it works, without major changes to the stackview JS code itself.

Don't want to use the stackview_call_numbers table?

It is kind of hacky. Do you have another source for your call numbers? Do you want to try to get them via Solr directly using the ndushay/stanford hack?

The code extracts out the actual fetch logic into a RailsStackview::DbWindowFetcher adapter. We intend to let you replace it with your own adapter, that takes the HTTP params sent by stackview itself, and returns a list of hashes to be given back to it.

This architecture isn't neccesarily fully fleshed out, some parts of RailsStackview may be hard-coded in unpleasant ways, but the beginnings are there.

Front-end Support: The Browser Template

You can write your own Rails template with the stackview element on it. It turns out it's a bit tricky to get right for common cases.

rails_stackview provides a 'browser' template you can use, which is a two-column display with stackview on the left, and an item detail panel on the right. It takes care of a lot of odd edge cases and details, especially focused again on an 'infinite' shelf browser use case.

You can use this template in your own controller action method. It needs to be initialized with an starting point sortkey, which the stack will center on. It's recommended you use a query parameter to pass in the sort key -- the browser javascript includes some code to update such a query param with JS replaceState(), to keep back button working well. 

render :template => 'rails_stackview/browser', :locals => {:origin_sort_key => params["origin_sort_key"]}

You may want to customize your Rails layout template to work best with the browser template. The browser template is designed best to work with no padding or spacing underneath it -- Javascript will set the stackview element to stretch to the bottom of the browser. A small header is okay. No right or left margin or padding is best.

The browser template does use the back-end StackviewDataController, you will need to have that set up properly as above.

If you want a click on a stack item to load information in the right panel, then you need to define your own Rails route with a stackview_browser_item, which returns partial HTML that should be loaded (via AJAX) in the item detail panel on a click.

After an item is loaded by the browser JS, a custom stackview-item-load JS event is triggered, with the item panel div as the target.

On very small screens, the browser is only a single column without the item detail panel, and clicks on items will follow the href set on the items, see above under Set the link URL.

Custom format plain

rails_stackview adds it's own custom "plain" format, which we use for items that are neither books, CDs, DVDs, etc. Or where we can't be sure what format they are.

The design isn't too sophisticated, but is meant to look kind of like a plain box with a printed label. It does implement stackview heatmap coloring.

If you have included rails_stackview CSS and JS, the plain format is available.

Set format format property to plain to trigger. Or, you can set additional format description after a colon: plain:LP, or plain:Whatever we want, and the additional format description will be included on the label.

Development

Vendored stackview assets

Stackview assets (JS, CSS, images) are included directly in source here, under ./vendor/assets.

The original stackview is not versioned, but the git SHA hash of the currently vendored assets is included at ./vendor/assets/stackview.sha

There is a script for refreshing these assets in rails_stackview source, see ./vendor/assets/README.md.