dh-center-tuebingen / spacialist

A Virtual Research Environment for the Spatial Humanities

Spacialist

Spacialist is a customizable Web-based platform for collecting, managing, analyzing and publishing research data with a focus on the integration of object-related and spatial data for the digital humanities.

Installation

Installation procedures and system requirements are described here. Important! Please read the installation file before any update for breaking changes or any other important steps that may break the update!

Plugins (Beta)

Since Release Isfahan Spacialist is extensible by plugins. If you are a developer and want to create your own plugin, please refer to this HowTo Guide.

A list with all available plugins is coming soon.

Testing

All PHPUnit tests are based on the DemoSeeder seed. To run tests, follow these steps:

1. Create a new database and a .env.testing file (cp .env .env.testing) and reference the DB in your .env.testing or, if you don't have/want one, in your .env file
2. Run migrations
   • For .env.testing: php artisan migrate --env=testing
   • For .env: php artisan migrate
3. Run seeds
   • For .env.testing: php artisan db:seed --class=DemoSeeder --env=testing
   • For .env: php artisan db:seed --class=DemoSeeder
4. Run vendor/bin/phpunit

Screenshots

For more screenshots have a look at the screenshot folder

Acknowledgments

Development of Spacialist was co-funded from 2015-2018 by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg in the "E-Science" funding programme.

spacialist's Issues

Spacialist should share project database with ThesauRex

For any specific project, both Spacialist and ThesauRex should use the same project DB

user interface for certainty of property needs revamping

My suggestion is can bee seen here:

display loading pizza on initialization

right now on my home network it takes about 7 seconds to wait until the GUI is ready for use. Can we display a loading pizza during this wait time?

make sure l10n file is complete

this is very important

Removal of shapes using the Leaflet.Draw trashcan doesn't seem to work right

Click the trashcan. Click a shape. A popup appears, the shape stays. When you then click on Edit in the leaflet.draw control, you see that something has happened to the "deleted" shape. It cannot be edited any more, but it is still on the map.

UX of literature editor

... is screwed.

• deleting
• editing

Individual sorting of attributes

Currently all attributes are sorted alphabetically. Instead, it should be possible to configure the order of attributes individually; e.g.:

• Name
• Alternativer name
• Typ allgemein
• Datierung
• ...

remove color legend from map

Relation getconceptlabelsfromurl not found

The Query builder doesn't seem to work with Views as tables (e.g. https://github.com/eScienceCenter/Spacialist/blob/master/lumen/app/Http/Controllers/ContextController.php#L65)

When hovering over a point of the map, the name and not the ID should be visible

after login the UI needs a reload

because it is empty otherwise

Loadingtime

The initial loading of the page takes hours. Would be good to reduce this or at least notify the user through a loadingbar (or circle).

add attribute type geography

the user sets the value either manually as WKT or via a map picker.

🎱

No "Quellennachweise"

Would be cool: when there are no Quellennachweise for a context, the tab remains empty. A label like "There are no Quellennachweise for context Gullideckel hinterlegt" could be helpful for the user in this case.

no photo upload confirmation

when i upload a photo there is no confirmation when and whether it worked. only expanding the "Gesamte Fotosammlung" panel shows whether it has worked.

marker popup cannot indicate 2 or more linked contexts

right now the heading in the popup displays one of the linked concepts. If mutliple contexts are linked to the marker, we need to allow individual unlinking

strange login behavior

on a completely clean firefox install i go to demo/atlantis. i log in. then everything loads except the base map, and also the user name is not visible in the navbar:

Photos-Tab

• Local testing installations that point to the same database are unable to obtain any images.
• Upload of images doesn't work; after selecting an image from local disk nothing happens.
• Setting a link between an image and a context doesn't work (through right click and then click on 'Mit aktuellem Kontext verbinden' isn't working

Saving of Attributes doesn't work

The first error message (setMarkerOption is not defined) get's thrown when setting an attribute (e.g. selecting something from a dropdown list). When clicking 'Speicher' nothing happens either and another error (httpPostPromise is not defined) appears.

indentation in tree

see DH-Center-Tuebingen/ThesauRex#96

After PHP error auth token not refreshed

When a PHP error occurs, the auth token is not refreshed and so the user is kicked.

Changing hierarchy positions of elements in the tree

There should be the option to change then hierarchical position of a find or context later on. Best solution seems to be a Drag and Drop function comparable to the one in ThesauRex.

embed dbWebGen as analysis tool

Main menu item Data Analysis with menu items:

• New Data Analysis embeds /spacialist/<project_name>/db/?mode=query&navbar=off&padding=none
• Browse Data Analyses embeds /spacialist/<project_name>/db/?mode=list&table=stored_queries&navbar=off

new top level context glitches

on demo/atlantis i add a new top level context, then:

• it does not appear in the tree (only after reload)
• the last modified field shows: Invalid Date Invalid Date () (valid date shown only after reload)

Visual indicator after user action completed

When an action was successful, a non-intrusive visual indicator shall appear (e.g. when linking a photo to a context). The suggestion is to show a green checkmark with some short label -e.g. "success"- in the bottom right corner.

once in literature view, there's no way out of it

in "certainty dialog": first added literature item does not appear

i open the "Additional Information" dialog for some random attribute that has no references yet. I add a reference. It is added in the DB, but not in the GUI. it is shown when closing and reopening the dialog

1:1 mapping between marker and context

see discussion in #150

when adding a layer in a higher zoom level is completed, map zoom resets to full view

The zoom level should not change after a Leaflet.Draw action is completed.

Photos are not displayed

Currently there are no photos displayed, however there are photos in the DB.

delete context does not work properly

• when i delete a context from the "Delete" button in the context form, the context is deleted but it remains active in the form and stays in the tree (only after reload it is gone)

• when i delete a context from the tree right-click menu, i then cannot even click the "Delete" button in the modal popupt. Nothing happens at all.

have to click 5 error boxes away before logging in

Create seeds

As mentioned in #44 database seeds still need to be created

Editing of the forms at level 1 ('library')

No entries are possible within:

• 'Identifizierung'
• 'Inhalt'

Creating of a new 'library' (site)

While placing a marker works fine, it seems to be necessary to reload the site if one want's enter additional data. The form want be shown before the site has been reloaded. Currently you need to place the marker, reload the site, select the new marker, start making your edits (name etc.).

Literature table should have a head that let's you reset the order or filter each column

Currently the table that shows all literature within the project is sorted randomly and the can't be changed. It would be convenient to order every column individually and set customized filters; much like the tables within the Query tool worked.

save properties error

Select a context in the map. Edit one of the properties and click save. Then select another context on the map. Edit a property and click save. Then you will get an error message Trying to get property of non-object

literature table actions (edit / delete) always assume inital sort order

• go to literature
• sort by some column that changes the order
• edit the first entry. it will not match the first entry in the view.

Photo storage

Photo storage is currently managed with network paths (to save) and URLs (to retrieve).
Need to enable other options of storage and retrieval (e.g via (S)FTP or some RESTful API)

Move most of the controller logic to services

Our current implementation is not very angular-like. Thus we should move all non-ui logic from controllers to services

unlink context strange behavior

1. when i click a map marker and click "unlink from context", the popup content does not change, although it has been unlinked. only when closing and clicking the marker again i see that it has been unlinked.

2. still, when clicking the already unlinked context in the tree, the marker popup goes up and displays the "This marker is not linked to any context" message.

Queries are not selectable

The popup that contained the different queries doesn't contain any items. Therefore it's impossible to query the database.

inconsistent need for saving changes

Situation

• Some actions change the DB without any need to click "Save" or anything (e.g. linking a context with a marker or deleting a child context)
• Edits in the context form are discarded without notice when the user does not click "Save" explicitly
• Edit of the context name is reflected in the tree and map popup as the user types, but if "Save" is not clicked, the change is not persisted in the DB. In fact, until the next reload, the GUI suggests that the changes were stored in the DB by showing the unsaved edited name in tree, form and map.

Some possible remedies

• notify the user that leaving the form discards the edits and ask whether to save or discard (my preferred way)
• consistently save every change without explicit Saving (can be problematic without undo functionality, a box I think we should not open)

Store user & project preferences in the DB

Personal prefs should be persisted in the DB, including:

• when a user changes the GUI langauge
• when a user changes the column layouts

Project wide prefs should also be configurable and persisted in the DB:

• the concept URL in thesaurus which is used as the root concept for tagging files in Spacialist
• whether or not the geo map (or other part of the UI) shall be displayed.
• whether or not a link/button to the ThesauRex instance should be displayed
• whether or not tooltips should be shall be displayed
• Project name (displayed in the upper left corner and in ThesauRex URIs)

Not all entries saved when register new finds

Some field work, but other don't:

• 'Name', 'Aufbewahrungsort', 'Datierung' and 'Fundort': working
• 'beschrieben': only registers small pieces of text; behaves quite irregular
• 'Funddatum': doesn't work at all

context name change fails

changing the name of a context throws Error: $scope is not defined and achieves nothing

Leaflet.Draw edits spawn a duplicate Leaflet.Draw menu control

also not sure what the edit / delete control on the top left corner means, it is already present in the bottom right corner.

DB functions are not created as part of the migrations

this is a showstopper on a blank installation. please fix asap

also seeds need to be created

Map-Tab

• It's not possible to link a geometry (a geo object) with a context from the database. This should be possible, very much like the way photos are linked with contexts.
• Currently child-context are inheriting the geodata of their parent-contexts. This should not be the case. Like that only the topmost marks on the map can be selected, which are the child-elements usually.
• During the first loading of the map, the center point of the Popups are way off. Only after panning or zooming around, the Popups are centered on top the their respective markers. This should be fixed.
• When selecting a marker, the Popup is centered on the point one has clicked, not the center of the marker (which should be the case).
• The legend should be as wide, as the longest label. Currently 'Architektureinheiten' are cut off and placed in a new line.
• There should be a Layer-Selection that gives the user the ability to switch between different background maps and enable layers provided through the GeoServer (WMS)

Add role editor to user management

It is currently not possible to add, edit, delete roles. It is only possible to use the predefined roles or modify them in the database.