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
While trying to get translation and citing working with asynchronously
generated data, we realized that drag-and-drop support was going to
be...problematic. Firefox only supports synchronous methods for
providing drag data (unlike, it seems, the DataTransferItem interface
supported by Chrome), which means that we'd need to preload all relevant
data on item selection (bounded by export.quickCopy.dragLimit) and keep
the translate/cite methods synchronous (or maintain two separate
versions).
What we're trying instead is doing what I said in #518 we weren't going
to do: loading most object data on startup and leaving many more
functions synchronous. Essentially, this takes the various load*()
methods described in #518, moves them to startup, and makes them operate
on entire libraries rather than individual objects.
The obvious downside here (other than undoing much of the work of the
last many months) is that it increases startup time, potentially quite a
lot for larger libraries. On my laptop, with a 3,000-item library, this
adds about 3 seconds to startup time. I haven't yet tested with larger
libraries. But I'm hoping that we can optimize this further to reduce
that delay. Among other things, this is loading data for all libraries,
when it should be able to load data only for the library being viewed.
But this is also fundamentally just doing some SELECT queries and
storing the results, so it really shouldn't need to be that slow (though
performance may be bounded a bit here by XPCOM overhead).
If we can make this fast enough, it means that third-party plugins
should be able to remain much closer to their current designs. (Some
things, including saving, will still need to be made asynchronous.)
- Moved ::_get() and _set() from Collection/Search into DataObject, and
disabled in Item
- Don't disable new items after save. We now put new objects into the
DataObjects cache from save() so that changes made post-save are
picked up by other code using .get().
- Added 'skipCache' save() option to avoid reloading data on new objects
and adding them to the cache. (This will be used in syncing, where
objects might be in another library where they're not needed right
away.) Objects created with this option are instead disabled to
prevent reuse.
- Modified some tests to try to make sure we're reloading everything properly
after a save.
- Documented save() options
