This changes the way item types, item fields, creator types, and CSL
mappings are defined and handled, in preparation for updated types and
fields.
Instead of being predefined in SQL files or code, type/field info is
read from a bundled JSON file shared with other parts of the Zotero
ecosystem [1], referred to as the "global schema". Updates to the
bundled schema file are automatically applied to the database at first
run, allowing changes to be made consistently across apps.
When syncing, invalid JSON properties are now rejected instead of being
ignored and processed later, which will allow for schema changes to be
made without causing problems in existing clients. We considered many
alternative approaches, but this approach is by far the simplest,
safest, and most transparent to the user.
For now, there are no actual changes to types and fields, since we'll
first need to do a sync cut-off for earlier versions that don't reject
invalid properties.
For third-party code, the main change is that type and field IDs should
no longer be hard-coded, since they may not be consistent in new
installs. For example, code should use `Zotero.ItemTypes.getID('note')`
instead of hard-coding `1`.
[1] https://github.com/zotero/zotero-schema
- Simplified schema
- Tags are now added without reloading entire tag selector
- On my system, adding 400 tags to an item (separately, with the tag
selector updating each time) went from 59 seconds to 42. (Given that
it takes only 13 seconds with the tag selector closed, though,
there's clearly more work to be done.)
- Tag selector now uses HTML flexbox (in identical fashion, for now, but
with the possibility of fancier changes later, and with streamlined
logic thanks to the flexbox 'order' property)
- Various async fixes
- Tests
Relations are now properties of collections and items rather than
first-class objects, stored in separate collectionRelations and
itemRelations tables with ids for subjects, with foreign keys to the
associated data objects.
Related items now use dc:relation relations rather than a separate table
(among other reasons, because API syncing won't necessarily sync both
items at the same time, so they can't be stored by id).
The UI assigns related-item relations bidirectionally, and checks for
related-item and linked-object relations are done unidirectionally by
default.
dc:isReplacedBy is now dc:replaces, so that the subject is an existing
object, and the predicate is now named
Zotero.Attachments.replacedItemPredicate.
Some additional work is still needed, notably around following
replaced-item relations, and migration needs to be tested more fully,
but this seems to mostly work.
Promise-based rewrite of most of the codebase, with asynchronous database and file access -- see https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/518 for details.
WARNING: This includes backwards-incompatible schema changes.
An incomplete list of other changes:
- Schema overhaul
- Replace main tables with new versions with updated schema
- Enable real foreign key support and remove previous triggers
- Don't use NULLs for local libraryID, which broke the UNIQUE index
preventing object key duplication. All code (Zotero and third-party)
using NULL for the local library will need to be updated to use 0
instead (already done for Zotero code)
- Add 'compatibility' DB version that can be incremented manually to break DB
compatibility with previous versions. 'userdata' upgrades will no longer
automatically break compatibility.
- Demote creators and tags from first-class objects to item properties
- New API syncing properties
- 'synced'/'version' properties to data objects
- 'etag' to groups
- 'version' to libraries
- Create Zotero.DataObject that other objects inherit from
- Consolidate data object loading into Zotero.DataObjects
- Change object reloading so that only the loaded and changed parts of objects are reloaded, instead of reloading all data from the database (with some exceptions, including item primary data)
- Items and collections now have .parentItem and .parentKey properties, replacing item.getSource() and item.getSourceKey()
- New function Zotero.serial(fn), to wrap an async function such that all calls are run serially
- New function Zotero.Utilities.Internal.forEachChunkAsync(arr, chunkSize, func)
- Add tag selector loading message
- Various API and name changes, since everything was breaking anyway
Known broken things:
- Syncing (will be completely rewritten for API syncing)
- Translation architecture (needs promise-based rewrite)
- Duplicates view
- DB integrity check (from schema changes)
- Dragging (may be difficult to fix)
Lots of other big and little things are certainly broken, particularly with the UI, which can be affected by async code in all sorts of subtle ways.
