APIView Yet Another reArchitecting of APP

[chidozieononiwu]

Attempting to implement various requested features in APIView have many times proved difficult or impossible. Most of these are due to the current architecture of APIView and others are limitations in ASP.NET MVC framework. For a while I have been exploring way to rearchitect APIView such that many of these features can be implemented in a robust non-hacky manner. This issue explains the coming changes and a timeline for completing them.

The main idea is to decouple the presentation code from most of the logic by exposing a robust APIView API (this is one of our user requests), then replacing the client side with a progressive web application that offers many tools for modern and rapid web development out of the box. The goal here is that the API would be as useful as the client application such that one could potentially build a different client (say VS code) to run off it or just use the API directly. The PWA front end will run side by side with existing ASP.NET until we decide to retire the later.

A lot of this work is already done. Below is a time frame for completion.

• Index Page , Review & APIRevison API endpoint - Completed Not deployed.
  Issues Resolved

  • [APIView] Order by column #2282
  • [APIView] Check-boxes to enable deleting multiple API reviews? #3159
  • APIView - Add new filter in UI to show list of reviews not approved for first release #4747

• Review Page, API endpoint for APITree Tokens, and Comments, Approval e.t.c.
  Issues Resolved

  • The main issue that will be addressed here is the addition of true lazy loading so we don't experience page performance issue when loading documentation or packages with large number of APIs.
  • We also enable many features request that we cannot currently implement properly due to limitations of UI components of native ASP.Net MVC.

Requests from Feedback Session May 23rd 2024

• Pinned APIRevision (Latest GA, Latest Approved, Current Main, Latest Released). Shown as regular dropdown items with appropriate tags, pinned to the top of the dropdown list.
• Re-Order filters in API Revision Select: Approved, Released, Auto, Manual, PR.
• Use Auto, Manual, PR Icons on filter buttons and add tooltip over icons.
• Move Filter buttons bellow search text box.
• Add option for disabling lazy loading of code-panel rows (so all row are present on page at once) Add ability to search text back in APIView - disable lazy loading #8716
• Add ability to search code-panel rows in lazy loaded state. Add ability to search text back in APIView - disable lazy loading #8716
• Add Diff styles. Full Diff (Full API with diff shown), Tree Diff (Only nodes with diff in descendant but show full content), Node Diff (Only nodes with diff in descendant but show only the nodes with diff and some context around them).

What's required to Deploy to Production
This will be made available on language basis with C# and Java being the first

• Script run against original files to generate tree style tokens stored alongside flat list of tokens.
• Update Automatic and Pull Request API to support tree tokens. (Basically, Comparing API Revisions to evaluate if there is a change)
• Feature Parity with regular APIView. Approval, Request Reviewers, Subscribe, Mark as Viewed, Change History Display, Navigation Jumps
• Sample Page - Completed at later date

Required to close the epic

Preview Give feedback

1. APIView SPA - APIRevision MetaData BugFix #8694
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
2. APIView SPA - Bug Fix for First release button #8695
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
3. Add Conversations page into new page update #8715
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
4. Move comment refreshment (SignalR code) to new APIView UI #8743
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
5. AutoRefresh Page Features #7735
   0 of 1
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
6. APIView - Associated Pull Requests in SPA UI #8839
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
7. Create APIView Subscribe Switch #8705
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
8. APIView - Hide skipped diff in UI #8704
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
9. Move Samples page to new APIView UI #8742
   0 of 3
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
10. Regression UI when not log in #8762
    APIView Central-EngSys +2
    

Other issues to keep in mind while working on this

Preview Give feedback

1. APIView - Add option to expand and collapse all documentation #4737
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
2. [APIView] UI Improvements #5585
   APIView Central-EngSys Community Contribution +3
   
3. APIView - Add next and previous for diff #6114
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   
4. ApiView should not show a diff when its just an order change #6132
   .NET APIView +2
   
5. [API view] Support showing tooltip when hovered over type definitions #5571
   APIView APIView Priority 3 Central-EngSys +3
6. Add ability to search text back in APIView - disable lazy loading #8716
   APIView Central-EngSys +2
   

@maririos @praveenkuttappan @JonathanGiles