2.25.0
New features 🎉
New Catalog Search View with Cesium 3D Maps 🌎
A re-designed catalog search view with Cesium 3D maps is now available in MetacatUI 2.25.0, enhancing the earlier version that was released as beta in MetacatUI 2.22.0. This new, flexible view replaces the previous Data Catalog View which relied on Google Maps, and makes it easier for repositories to customize their catalog search filters, select map layers, and adjust map display settings.
Cesium, being a 3D globe, is capable of accurately representing research data at the poles. The new view also expands the choice of map layers, allowing selections from ESRI, Bing, OpenStreetMap, or any tile server supporting WMS or WMTS.
Using the new Catalog, repositories can now customize the search filters on the left side of the view. Any fields available in the Solr index can be used to create a dropdown, text input, number slider, checkbox, or toggle filter that best suits the data in the repository.
To allow time for repositories to transition, the previous Data Catalog View with Google Maps will remain as the default view for now. However, the new catalog will be released immediately on the Arctic Data Center.
For more details, see #1520 and #1720.
Google Analytics 4 📊
With this update, MetacatUI now supports Google Analytics 4 (#1709) and has replaced the analytics.js library with the gtag.js library. GA4 facilitates the collection of more diverse types of data and offers more sophisticated analysis tools for your data repositories. This transition is required since Google will stop supporting old universal analytics on July 1st. To continue collecting data from Google Analytics after this date, repositories will need to upgrade to this release (2.25.0) and set the googleAnalyticsKey configuration option to a GA4 property.
Changes to how MetacatUI handles analytics also serves as groundwork for eventually supporting other analytics tools in the future, see #2149.
Misc improvements
- Add metatags to portals for better SEO #2150
Features added to Cesium during the development of the new Catalog Search View include:
- Support Open Street Map layer in Cesium #2146
- Allow dynamic color palettes for cesium layers #2125
- Allow using RGBA values in the Cesium Color Palette #2124
- Allow configuring outlines in vector data sources in Cesium #2123
- Optimize GeoHash rendering #2119
Bug fixes 🛠️
- PubDate search filter not working in old catalog view #2151
Bugs in the beta version of the new Catalog Search View, fixed in this release, include:
- Handle page and query url consistently in CatalogSearchView #2113
- CatalogSearchView should navigate back to first page in new search #2112
- Fix CatalogSearchView display when there are no results #2111
- Limit drawing GeoHashes to the view extent in the Cesium map #2076
- Can't scroll to see all the filter options when they spill beyond the height of the window in the new CatalogSearchView #2071
- Geohash boxes float above the earth's surface in Cesium #2070
- Fix sizing of Geohash labels in the Cesium map #2066
- Geohashes in the Cesium map are added on zoom but not removed #2063
Developer notes
Configuring the New Catalog Search View & Cesium
To activate the new Catalog Search View, set the useDeprecatedDataCatalogView configuration option to false in the app model, and set enableCesium to true. For more detailed guidance on configuring the new view, please refer to our guide: https://nceas.github.io/metacatui/guides/catalog-view-config.html.
Configuring Google Analytics 4
On the MetacatUI side, all you need to do to make use of GA4 is to update your repository to this release (2.25.0) and set the googleAnalyticsKey configuration option to a GA4 property. You can create and configure a new property in the Google Analytics platform console. Google will migrate most of your existing settings to the new property for you, and provides a setup assistant to help with the rest. For more information on how to set up a GA4 property, see [UA→GA4] Migration guide for beginners and Add a Google Analytics 4 property (to a site that already has Analytics).
New configuration options
description- Use this property to provide a general description of the repository. This description will be used as the default description for the repository's metatags.googleAnalyticsKey- This property should now be set to a GA4 property ID, rather than a universal analytics property ID.