Hi Marcus, devs, I'd also suggest taking a look at Vue[1] for the front end. See [2] and [3] for a couple of comparisons between Vue and React. I haven't used either yet, but from what I understand they are quite similar. The primary differences seem to be that the React community is larger, but that Vue is easier to get into. In particular, if a goal for the PGA is for developers to be able to jump in and quickly customize it to their needs, Vue's HTML templates might be easier to learn than React's JSX-based component system. It also seems to be easier to slowly add bits of Vue to a site over time, while React really requires full buy-in from the beginning.
Dave [1] https://vuejs.org/ [2] https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/comparison.html [3] https://medium.com/js-dojo/react-or-vue-which-javascript-ui-library-should-you-be-using-543a383608d -- David Reagan Advanced Visualization Lab Indiana University avl.iu.edu The Advanced Visualization Lab is part of the Research Technologies division of UITS; Research Technologies is a PTI Cyberinfrastructure & Service Center. ________________________________________ From: Christie, Marcus Aaron <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 3, 2017 4:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Requirements for an updated portal architecture Dev, I’ve been taking feedback from other Airavata developers and working on requirements for a next generation architecture for the PGA. First I’ll list out the requirements as I see them. Then I will propose what I feel is a best fit for these requirements. Feedback on all of this is much appreciated. Requirements The following is a list of problems we would like to solve by adopting a new web framework. A new web framework here means both the backend framework for server side code as well as the frontend framework for client side code. 1. Have the ability to independently add new views to the portal. Framework should have some concept of modularity so new functionality can be added without having to make changes to other parts of the portal. This would facilitate new features moving into production faster. 2. Have the ability to make calls to Identity Server (SOAP) and Airavata (Thrift). Would be good if there is support for interacting with other remote computing protocols and HPC resources. 3. Be themable/skinnable and modular. Gateways should be able to customize the look and feel and make the portal their own. Gateways should be able to customize the functionality available in the portal, removing and adding just the functionality tailored for that specific gateway. 4. The backend framework should support different modes of web development: server-side rendered views as well as REST API for client side views. 5. The backend framework should be able to easily integrate with existing scientific codes for visualization and analysis. This would allow developing lightweight domain specific functionality within the portal itself. 6. The backend and frontend frameworks should have active communities and some longevity, helping to ensure continued support in the future. 7. The backend and frontend frameworks should have a gentle learning curve to promote onboarding new contributors. Setting up a local development environment should be relatively easy. 8. The frontend framework should allow the development of more sophisticated client side views: • Domain specific and interactive views for configuring applications and viewing results • Domain specific and interactive views for browsing, filtering and managing remote and personal data collections • More up front validation of application configurations Proposed solution With these requirements I feel like Django as a backend framework and React as a frontend framework are the best fit. Here are the benefits I see of adopting Django: * Django has a builtin concept of modularity, the application [1]. This would allow the independent development of new views for new funtionality (req 1) as well as making it possible to tailor a portal to a gateway’s needs (req 3). * Django has a very active community and lots of off the shelf applications [2] that can be used to either quickly develop common portal functionality or to add gateway specific features * Being written in Python means that the backend can easily integrate with Python scientific codes for quick data analysis and visualization tasks * A side benefit of a Python based portal is the opportunity to develop a first class Airavata client in Python. This could enable scripts to take advantage of the Airavata API or Juptyer like interactions with the API. * Django is well-documented and relatively straightforward to work with, easing on-boarding of new developers Regarding React, I see these benefits: * React is a much more powerful and scalable approach to web UI development than just using jQuery, which is what the current PGA uses. With React we can build UIs with a higher degree of interactivity. And we can build richer, more domain-specific interfaces. * Unlike other JS frameworks that have a very large API to learn, the concepts and API surface of React is fairly small. The main challenge is learning to “think in React” [3] Again, feedback on this is much appreciated. Thanks, Marcus [1] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/ref/applications/ [2] https://djangopackages.org/ [3] https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/thinking-in-react.html
