So, Are we saying that UIs built on OpenStack APIs shouldn't be able to show traditional pagination controls? Or am I missing how this should work with marker/limit?
e.g. for 11 pages of content, something like: 1 2 3 .. 10 11 Thanks, Kiall On 13/08/13 22:45, Jay Pipes wrote: > On 08/13/2013 05:04 PM, Gabriel Hurley wrote: >> I have been one of the earliest, loudest, and most consistent PITA's about >> pagination, so I probably oughta speak up. I would like to state three facts: >> >> 1. Marker + limit (e.g. forward-only) pagination is horrific for building a >> user interface. >> 2. Pagination doesn't scale. >> 3. OpenStack's APIs have historically had useless filtering capabilities. >> >> In a world where pagination is a "must-have" feature we need to have page >> number + limit pagination in order to build a reasonable UI. Ironically >> though, I'm in favor of ditching pagination altogether. It's the >> lowest-common denominator, used because we as a community haven't buckled >> down and built meaningful ways for our users to get to the data they really >> want. >> >> Filtering is great, but it's only 1/3 of the solution. Let me break it down >> with problems and high level "solutions": >> >> Problem 1: I know what I want and I need to find it. >> Solution: filtering/search systems. > > This is a good place to start. Glance has excellent filtering/search > capabilities -- built in to the API from early on in the Essex > timeframe, and only expanded over the last few releases. > > Pagination solutions should build on a solid filtering/search > functionality in the API, where there is a consistent sort key and > direction (either hard-coded or user-determined, doesn't matter). > > Limit/offset pagination solutions (forward and backwards paging, random > skip-to-a-page) are inefficient from a SQL query perspective and should > be a last resort, IMO, compared to limit/marker. With some smart > session-storage of a page's markers, backwards paging with limit/marker > APIs is certainly possible -- just store the previous page's marker. > >> Problem 2: I don't know what I want, and it may or may not exist. >> Solution: tailored discovery mechanisms. > > This should not be a use case that we spend much time on. Frankly, this > use case can be summarized as "the window shopper scenario". Providing a > quality search/filtering mechanism, including the *API* itself providing > REST-ful discovery of the filters and search criteria the API supports, > is way more important... > >> Problem 3: I need to know something about *all* the data in my system. >> Solution: reporting systems. > > Sure, no disagreement there. > >> We've got the better part of none of that. > > I disagree. Some of the APIs have support for a good bit of > search/filtering. We just need to bring all the projects up to search > speed, Captain. > > Best, > -jay > > p.s. I very often go to the second and third pages of Google searches. > :) But I never skip to the 127th page of results. > > > But I'd like to solve these issues. I have lots of thoughts on all of > those, and I think the UX and design communities can offer a lot in > terms of the usability of the solutions we come up with. Even more, I > think this would be an awesome working group session at the next summit > to talk about nothing other than "how can we get rid of pagination?" >> >> As a parting thought, what percentage of the time do you click to the second >> page of results in Google? >> >> All the best, >> >> - Gabriel >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OpenStack-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev >> > > > _______________________________________________ > OpenStack-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev > _______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
