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Generic Data Viewer React Admin

This Web app allows users to easily execute queries over multiple data sources (including Solid pods) and inspect the corresponding results.

Table of contents:

Preface

This repository defines a Web application in the directory main and some auxiliary tools for testing and supporting a demo in the directory test.

Getting started

The application is located in directory main. Go to that directory.

To install the application:

npm install

To run the Web application in development mode:

npm run dev

Now you can browse the displayed URL.

If you want to test the queries provided in the default configuration main/src/config.json, continue in section The supporting resources.

The supporting resources

The supporting resources, including a local pod containing example data, are located in directory test.

To install, go to directory test and execute:

npm install

Next, activate the supporting resources by executing each of the following steps in a new terminal window, also in directory test:

  1. Prepare and start the local pods:

    npm run reset:pods && npm run start:pods

  2. Start the http proxy:

    npm run start:proxy

  3. Start a server which denies all CORS headers:

    npm run start:badCors

Some queries require a log in. Log in with the IDP http://localhost:8080 and the credentials for the user owning the pod named example in the file test/seeded-pod-config.json.

Static, production build

To make a standalone version of the result of this project, you can make a static build and serve it using any webserver.

In directory main, execute:

npm run build

The static build appears in directory main/dist.

This static build can be served on a webserver without modifications from the host's root path (e.g. https://www.example.com), or from any other path (e.g. https://www.example.com/your/preferred/path).

Logging in

Some queries access data sources that are only readable by authenticated users. This requires you to log in. To log in, you need to provide an Identity Provider or a WebID. The application will detect which one you use and redirect you to the login page of your Identity Provider. If you provide a WebID, the first Identity Provider found in the given WebID is used.

Configuration file

The configuration file main/src/config.json follows a simple structure.

{
  "title": "Title shown at the top of the app.",
  "logoLocation": "Image location of the logo shown at the top of the app (relative to public folder.).",
  "logoRedirectURL": "The URL the Web application redirects to when a user clicks on the logo.",
  "mainAppColor": "The main colors used in the app, can be any CSS color.",
  "backgroundColor": "Background color of the app, can be any CSS color.",
  "titleColor": "The color of the title, can be any CSS color",
  "textColor": "The color of all the text in teh app body, this means all text except header and footer.",
  "footer": "HTML components or text that will function as the footer (will be placed in the footer div.)",
  "defaultIDP": "The default value used for IDP when logging in, this IDP can be manually changed in the Web app as well. ",
  "queryFolder": "The base location of the queries, all query locations will start from this folder (relative to public folder.)",
  "httpProxy": "The http proxy through which the requests will be rerouted. When left empty, the Comunica query engine will handle it. This is useful when CORS headers are not set (correctly) on the queried source.",
  "introductionText": "The text that the app shows on the dashboard, which the app also shows when you first open it.",
  "queryGroups" : [
    {
      "id": "A unique ID for the query group",
      "name": "A name for the query group",
      "icon": "The key to the icon for the query group. This is optional and a default menu icon will be used when left empty."
    }
  ],
  "queries": [
    {
      "id": "A unique ID for the query. This ID appears in the URL of the displayed result. Queries are ordered in the menu according to ascending ID.",
      "queryGroupId": "ID of the query group too which this query belongs. If not given, the query is displayed outside existing groups.",
      "queryLocation": "Path to the query location, relative to 'queryFolder'",
      "name": "A name for the query",
      "description": "Description of the query",
      "icon": "The key to the icon for the query. This is optional and a default menu icon will be used when left empty.",
      "comunicaContext": {
        "sources": "Initial array of sources over which the query should be executed",
        "useProxy": "True or false, whether the query should be executed through the proxy or not. This field is optional and defaults to false.",
        ... any other field that can be used in the Comunica query engine https://comunica.dev/docs/query/advanced/context/
      },
      "sourcesIndex": {
        "url": "URL of the publicly available RDF resource acting as an index file for more sources over which the query should be executed",
        "queryLocation": "Path to the location, relative to 'queryFolder', of the (auxiliary) query that yields the sources from above RDF resource"
      },
      "variables": {
        "variableExampleString": ["\"String1\"", "\"String2\""],
        "variableExampleUri": ["<https://example.com/uri1>", "<https://example.com/uri2>"],
        "variableExampleInteger": ["1", "2"]
      },
      "indirectVariables": {
        "queryLocations": [
          "Path to the location, relative to 'queryFolder' of a query yielding some template variable values",
          ...
        ]
      },

      "askQuery": {
        "trueText": "The text that is to be shown when the query result is true (in ASK queries).",
        "falseText": "The text that is to be shown when the query result is false (in ASK queries)."
      }
    },
    ... etc
  ]
}

Specifying sources

The set of sources over which a query will be executed is derived from two optional inputs in a query entry:

  • comunicaContext.sources: an array of sources, known at the time of writing the config file;
  • sourceIndex: describes an external RDF resource, from which sources are derived at execution time.

If both inputs are present, the query will be executed over the superset of sources.

The (auxiliary) query provided in sourceIndex.queryLocation is executed on sourceIndex.url and must result in the list of source URLs.

If sourceIndex is used and there is no comunicaContext.lenient property found, one will be created with value true. This makes sure that the (main) query can succeed if not all obtained sources are accessible.

Adding variable type

When executing a query, it gives us either a URL, a literal value or a blank node. These URLs could reference to anything e.g. a picture, spreadsheet, resume, and so on. Also literals can be lots of things e.g. a float, integer, string, birthdate, price, and so on. By clarifying what the expected type is of the query result corresponding to a given variable we can fully interpret how we can display and represent the result.

You can specify the type of a variable by extending its name with the type in the query as such: variableName_variableType. The underscore _ here is crucial to make a clear distinction between name and type.

Templated queries

This application supports templated queries: queries whose contents are not completely fixed upfront. They can contain template variables. A template variable is an identifier preceded by a $ sign, e.g. $genre. Before submitting the SPARQL query, each template variable will be replaced by the actual value assigned to it interactively.

Templated queries with fixed values for the template variables

If all possible values for the template variables are fixed and hence can be written in the config file, proceed as follows.

  • Replace the fixed portion(s) of the original query with (a) template variable(s).
  • In the config file:
    • Add a variables object in the query's entry in the configuration file.
    • In the variables object, for each template variable, add a property with name equal to the template variable's identifier.
    • Set each such property's value to an array of strings, where each string is a possible value for the corresponding template variable.

Note that template variables' values are not restricted to strings: URIs for example are also possible. As a consequence, for strings the surround double quotes " must be added to the values in the array. For URIs you must add surrounding angle brackets <>. Other literals (integers for example) don't have to be surrounded with extra delimiters. This is shown in the configuration structure above.

Templated queries with values for the template variables to be derived from the data

In most cases, the values for the template variables are not fixed, but depend on the data to query. For those cases, these values can be specified indirectly, by referring to one or more auxiliary queries. Proceed as follows.

  • Write one or more auxiliary queries that yield the values of the template variable(s). The variable names in the SELECT statement must match the template variable names (e.g ?genre for template variable $genre).
  • Replace the fixed portion(s) of the original query with (a) template variable(s).
  • In the config file:
    • Add an indirectVariables object in the query's entry in the configuration file.
    • In the indirectVariables object, add a property queryLocations: this must be an array, listing the location(s) of the one or more auxiliary queries that you wrote.

An example auxiliary query for the variable $genre, as used in one of the provided example templated queries:

PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/> 

SELECT DISTINCT ?genre WHERE {
  ?list schema:genre ?genre;
}

Query icons

In the selection menu the name of the query is proceeded by an icon. You configure this icon per query in the configuration file.
For this to work you need to add the icon to the exports in IconProvider.js. We advise to use the Material UI icons as this is what's used internally in react-admin and it is also included in the dependencies. Nevertheless, you can use any React component you want, just make sure it's a functional component.

Custom queries

The configuration file contains prepared, fixed queries. In addition, a user can create and edit custom queries, either from scratch or based on an existing query.

  • To create a new custom query from scratch:

    • Open "Custom Query Editor" from the menu on the left.
    • Complete the custom query editor form and click the "CREATE QUERY" button when ready.
    • Your new query is added to the "Custom queries" group and you are redirected to the query's result view.
    • If not satisfied with the query result, you can click "EDIT QUERY" to further edit your query. When saving changes, the result is recalculated.

  • To create a new custom query based on an existing query:

    • Open the existing query.
    • Click "CLONE AS CUSTOM QUERY" (in a normal query) or "CLONE" (in a custom query).
    • Make the desired changes in the form and click the "CREATE QUERY" button when ready. The new custom query behaves as if it were created from scratch.

  • To share a custom query, a "SHARE QUERY" button is provided. Use it to generate a unique URL for this custom query. Visiting that URL any time later, recreates a custom query with the same specifications. This may be useful to share a custom query to another user or to save it for yourself.

  • To clean up an unwanted custom query, there is always a button "DELETE QUERY"...

Warning: custom queries are stored in your browser's memory and will disappear if the browser page is refreshed or when switching logins.

Logged in users however have the possibility to save/load their custom queries to/from a selectable location in their Solid pod, via the buttons in the Dashboard.

Representation Mapper

If you want to add your own type representations you can do this by adding your representation to the representationProvider.js file. This can be useful for example when querying images. The result of the query is a reference to the image. By mapping a representation we can show the actual image instead of the reference.

The mapper follows a structure:

{
    "typeName": mapperComponent,
    ...
}

With typeName being the name of the variable as defined in the query which is defined in the configuration file. The function mapperComponent takes the query result for the corresponding variable and returns either a React component (see below). Examples of how you can do this can already be found in the representationProvider components folder.

The components get the following props:

  • record (the query result), an object of RDF/JS objects.
  • variable the variable name and key of record, a string.

Hint use the Field components from react-admin to display the result. They've already got styling matching that of react-admin and are easy to use.

Warning if you change the record object, the changed will still be present in the next render.

Using the local pods

To support the provided example configuration main/src/config.json and the tests, this repo integrates some local pods. You can make use of these for your own tests. Follow these steps:

  • Add your data and .acl files in the test/initial-pod-data folder. These files will be available in the pod relative to http://localhost:8080/example/.
  • Prepare the pods by executing npm run reset:pods in directory test.

Advanced topics

Adapting this project to your needs

The easiest way to adapt this project to your needs is:

  1. Make your own fork on github.
  2. Concentrate on the files in the main subdirectory.
  3. Add your own queries in the main/public/queries directory and in general, your own resources in the main/public directory.
  4. Write your own main/src/config.json file, following the configuration file documentation above.
  5. Run or build as documented above.

Converting custom queries into common queries

Once you have your basic configuration working, you may extend it with custom queries interactively with the query editor and save these to a file in a pod. You can convert such custom queries into common queries, by adding them to main/src/config.json. Follow these steps to get started:

  1. Open and view the file with custom queries using a tool, such as Penny. The file has JSON syntax and contains an array of query objects.
  2. Copy the query objects of interest to the "queries" array in main/src/config.json. Note that the various queries that were documented in the configuration file documentation above in "queryLocation" properties, appear here as "queryString" variants, with inline contents rather than references to query files (*.rq). Leave as is or convert to query files as you like. Inline queries may be hard to read due to the difficult newline coding in JSON syntax.
  3. Update the "queryGroupId" property in all these queries, to separate them from the custom queries. Ensure the group exists in the "queryGroups" array, or create a new group if you prefer.
  4. Update the "id" property, to avoid conflicts with remaining custom queries: the id must be unique and it also defines the position in the query group.
  5. Adapt any other properties according to your preferences.
  6. Save main/src/config.json, rerun or rebuild and refresh your browser to test.

Testing

For testing with the provided configuration file, we use Cypress.

It is important to test the production version at least at the end of a development cycle.

The development version might be tested repeatedly during development.

Both the production version and the development version are tested from a non-empty path in the base URL.

Testing the production version

  1. Build the production version of the Web application and serve it:

    In directory main:

    # make really, really sure to build from scratch
rm -rf node_modules/
rm -rf dist/
npm install
# build
npm run build

    In directory test:

    npm run serve

  2. Spin up all supporting resources, as explained in The supporting resources.

  3. Finally, in a new terminal window, in directory test, you can execute the tests by running:

    For normal test execution:

    npm run test

    For interactive testing:

    npm run test:interactive

Testing the development version

The procedure is the same as for testing the production version, except for step 1, which is now:

  1. Start the Web application in development mode, using a non-empty path in the base URL:

    In directory main:

    npm run dev-with-path