Use statedb instead of cell metadata about jupyterlab-toc HOT 7 OPEN

@ian-r-rose As an update - I have been working on this, but it is taking a bit longer than expected as it involves converting a lot of the code to use promises. I feel like it is making things more complicated than it is worth; let me know if you have any thoughts on this.

from jupyterlab-toc.

Hi @markellekelly, thanks for looking into this. A few thoughts off of the top of my head:

I agree that using the StateDB would definitely make things more complicated. I think that most of the code could still be synchronous, however. I don't know how you are architecting it, but I could imagine that something like this could work:

1. The ToC widget still generates and renders tables of contents synchronously. By default it shows all entries.
2. However, it has a settable property, something like "collapsedState" that allows the ToC to rerender with the collapsed state.
3. We decide on some serializable format that can be stored in the IStateDB to keep the collapsed state between refreshes.
4. When a new document is opened, we fetch the collapsed state from the IStateDB. It can be rendered immediately in the uncollapsed state, and then we can apply the view state once it comes in.

Do you think that would work? Feel free to let me know if you would like to set up a video chat to talk through any of this.

from jupyterlab-toc.

@ian-r-rose That will likely be much simpler than what I'm currently doing. I'll look into it and let you know if any questions come up. Thanks!

from jupyterlab-toc.

@ian-r-rose Finally got a chance to look into this! One question: I'm having trouble getting the collapse onClick in the notebook item renderer to alter the statedb. The state is updated immediately after state.save (i.e. when checked within the same function call) but this isn't reflected the next time the function is called. I'm guessing this has to do with how I'm passing statedb in, could you take a look and let me know if you have any suggestions? https://github.com/markellekelly/jupyterlab-toc/tree/statedb (main file in question is src/generators/notebookgenerator/itemrenderer)

from jupyterlab-toc.

Sorry for taking so long to respond @markellekelly! Changing employment, life stuff, got way behind... :(
I'm taking a look at your branch now.

from jupyterlab-toc.

Hi @ian-r-rose! I pretty much have a working version based on your suggestions but am stuck on a serializable format to use as a key in StateDB. Storing notebook-by-notebook would be ideal but that might be tough to do. Did you have any ideas about this?

from jupyterlab-toc.

Hi @markellekelly that's great to hear! One key that we have used before to store items in the statedb is ${path}:${factory}, so a key would be something like 'Untitled.ipynb:notebook'.

from jupyterlab-toc.