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I stopped working on the Osm Admin project, for financial reasons. Did it hurt? A lot. Was it necessary? Unfortunately, yes. This post is a short retrospection on this matter.

I waited for this day too long. Today, I've tried out GitPod, and made it work for a project based on Osm Admin.

Today, I reiterated on what's left in this iteration, and finished the side menu view, and created a trivial home page for the admin area.

After getting the main branch all-green (tests pass, CLI and UI works as expected), I decided that from now on, I'll keep it always green, and use feature branches for all major development.

Then, I started implementing the main menu of the admin area.

Yesterday, I created a template for new projects powered by Osm Admin.

This way, you can create and publish a project in minutes, just follow the README. Yay!

Implemented in Osm Admin:

• new ALTER TABLE algorithm
• NULL to non-NULL data conversion
• new query test suite

This time, I tackled adding an explicit property to an existing table, and then making it non-nullable.

It raised the need for data conversions - additional handling of the existing data - or otherwise, the database engine fails, or the data becomes invalid.

And it made me split migrations in two parts - the one that runs before the data conversion, and the other one that runs afterwards.

While working on diff algorithm I noticed a certain pattern that I use over an over again.

Using this pattern, I implemented notification table diff.

Finally, I rearranged diff/migration code for better code readability.

Yesterday, I moved the table creation code into new schema diff migration engine.

Now, working on notification table migrations.

This time:

• I found out that the whole search index creation should be done during indexing, not migrations.
• I refactored diff algorithm and made it much easier to read.

Before digging into property diff algorithm, let's dig into how exactly it's used, and what other property-related logic is there.

Yesterday, I continued working on schema migrations:

• implemented table diff algorithm;
• took into consideration table renames.

After a system update, I've got some problem with my laptop, and one thing to check was system log files.

This got me thinking: what makes a good log for my own application? And I think that application logs are as useful as they are able to answer potential questions I may have when an application is in production.

Let's think what kind of questions I might have, and what information might be useful to answer them.

Recently, I fixed numerous issues to make the first migration tests work.

Then, I started implementing the schema diff algorithm - the basis for schema migrations.

More dots got connected in the schema migration design, see this post for details.

Then, I tried to return to TDDing it, but strange errors met me there, so I left them to be resolved in the next piece.

Schema migrations are going to be generated and executed automatically under gulp watch. It will result in lots of tiny migrations: add a column, change its type, make it not nullable, and so on.

It's convenient during development, but it might be not optimal to reapply in production. Indeed, it's better to convert a large table to new structure all at once rather than running a conversion for each of the tiny migration.

This observation contradicts the previously stated migration workflow, so let's update it.

In spirit of TDD, I started with a meaningful, but failing test that is reasonably fast. Then, I worked to make it green:

• implemented the loading of schema fixtures from the codebase;
• worked on generating migration files.

After drafting some ideas of how the schema migrations should actually work, let's start implementing it in TDD way.

The goal of the current iteration is to adjust the database schema and preserve/convert existing data according to any changes in schema classes, grids, forms or indexers.

This post presents some thoughts how it might work with class definitions.

After finishing the iteration "#17 Minimum UI", I revisited the goals and the scope of the minimum viable product, and picked the most pressing task for the next iteration - "#18 Database Schema Changes".

I implemented the last user action that is typical to a CRUD application - object deletion.

Done:

• routes responsible for creating new products, and modifying existing products
• incremental indexing
• cloning query objects
• INSERT INTO ... SELECT ... statements

My current goal is to get some minimum Osm Admin user interface and API working - just for one property, one data type, one UI control type, and then improve.

And there is a lot of space for improvement. The main areas are listed in this document.

I'd really appreciate a helping hand, so if you are into this sort of things, DM me on Twitter.

I feel that both attributes decorating data classes, and object model parsed from it are too complex.

Let's have a fresh look at Osm Admin. If I had to start from scratch, how would it be?

Recently, I implemented mass-editing in Osm Admin. It allows you to view and edit multiple objects in a single operation.

This article describes mass-editing of products in a typical e-commerce application.

In the user interface, you can narrow displayed data using grid column filters, or filters displayed in the sidebar. To enable that, apply #[Filter\*] attributes to class properties.

Applied filters appear in the URL query parameters, for example, .../edit?id=5+16+19, and on the page.

You can apply filters not only to a grid page, but also to a form page - to mass edit all matching objects, or to an action URL (edit, delete, or custom) - to perform the action on all matching objects.

In the same way, you can apply filters to the API URLs in order to retrieve or modify matching objects in a script.

Today, osm.software reached an important milestone - 100% Lighthouse score.

This article explains how to manage and assign blog categories.