Document field types in Islandora for users/librarians

[mjanowiecki]

When creating or editing fields in Islandora 8 for content types or taxonomies, there are a wide varieties of "Field Types" available for you to select as the basis of your field. There is some information on Drupal about Field Types (https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/api/entity-api/fieldtypes-fieldwidgets-and-fieldformatters), but it is not super helpful for the layperson and does not include all Field Types in Islandora 8. Public documentation on what each Field Type means would be extremely helpful, answering the following types of questions:

1. Basic definition
2. How does this field type limit or structure the data entered into that field?
3. What are the field types' behaviors and any sub-properties?

Here is list (which I think is complete) of Islandora 8 field types to describe:

Authority link
Boolean
Email
Link
Name
Timestamp
User
Comments
Content
Date
EDTF
Geolocation
Media
Taxonomy term
Typed Relation
List (float)
List (integer)
Number (decimal)
Number (float)
Number (integer)
Content
File
Image
Media
Taxonomy term
User
Other…
List (text)
Text (formatted)
Text (formatted, long)
Text (formatted, long, with summary)
Text (plain)
Text (plain, long)

[mjordan]

External documentation for field types would suffice, but if we want context-sensitive documentation, the Search API Solr module (http://localhost:8000/admin/config/search/search-api/index/default_solr_index/fields) provides an example of how we might document field types at the "Add Field" page itself (http://localhost:8000/admin/structure/types/manage/islandora_object/fields/add-field). Here is a screenshot of the Solr field data type documentation:

This is within a collapsable div at the bottom of the page. It's hidden by default but if the user clicks on "Data types", it expands to what you see here.

[mjanowiecki]

I think that's a good idea @mjordan. How would we go about implementing this?

[mjordan]

Not entirely sure without further investigation but something like modifying the view of /admin/structure/types/manage/islandora_object/fields/add-field might do it. Let me poke around to see how far I can get.

[mjordan]

I've figured out how to add a table to admin/structure/types/manage/islandora_object/fields/add-field. Here's what it looks like, with placeholder text in the right-hand column for now:

Any volunteers for some desctiptions?

[mjordan]

I've created a small module, https://github.com/mjordan/islandora8_issue_1280, to stuff my code into for now since I'm rebuilding my Islandora 8 vagrant. We can decide later if we want to add this to the Islandora module or to keep it in its own separate module.

[mjanowiecki]

This looks great! As for writing descriptions, if we don't get individual volunteers, I can see if the Metadata Interest Group would be interested in taking this on.

(I would volunteer myself, but I don't think I know quite enough just yet)

[whikloj]

@mjanowiecki if you want to try we can all provide context of that is helpful.

[mjanowiecki]

@whikloj Sure, I'd be up for that!

[mjordan]

I'll start with "Typed Relation":

A specialized type of taxonomy field that allows users to specify the "type" of the relationship between the Islandora object and the taxonomy terms. For example, if people's names are listed in a taxonomy, a typed relation field using that taxonomy will allow for a person to be a 'creator', 'photographer', or 'editor' of the work described in the object node.