On 07/20/2010 02:58 PM, Sebastian Benthall wrote:
Ariel brought up this issue in channel earlier. Wanted to recap the
discussion for the list.
Ariel pointed out the following bug: that after uploading new data the
layer page is not accessible anymore.
This raised a couple issues around the "replace data" functionality.
First, what should happen when a user uploads a shapefile that doesn't
have the same typename? I think the typename should stay the same
and the new filename should be thrown out.
Shapefiles don't have typenames. But, yes, replacing a layer implies
that the name will not be changing. Otherwise it's
"delete-and-upload-something-unrelated" which is probably not what
anyone is looking for. So +1 on using the existing typename when a user
goes through the "replace" form.
David brought up an additional problem, which is that if the new
shapefile has a substantially different schema, it can break styles
that are associated with that layer.
"substantial" is vague and misleading here. The changes are easily
described and could be automatically detected with a bit of effort.
Style-breaking changes include -
* removing attributes
* changing the type of an existing attribute
If we want, we could even scan known styles and only flag as an error
changes to attributes that are actually used.
What's the solution to this bug?
I think that if the way that best short-term solution is to add
whatever error handling is needed for the broken styles to fail
gracefully, and let the user clean up after broken styles as needed.
-0.5
I don't think that letting GeoNode users unwittingly break *other users'
maps* is a great way to go. imo, we should defer the layer replacement
feature until after the 1.0 release so we have time to implement some
complementary features to take off some of the rough edges.
Do these descriptions match others' expectations? If so, then I'll
make tickets about them.
