Provenance Library

A library to create and track provenance in web based apps.

Features

• Power you application to track user interactions or changes.
• Enable undo/redo functionality.
• Track changes in non-linear manner with branches.
• Simple API
• Full Typescript support

Installation

• NPM

npm install --save-dev @visdesignlab/provenance-lib-core

• Yarn

yarn add @visdesignlab/provenance-lib-core

Usage

import { initProvenance, Provenance, ProvenanceGraph } from '@visdesignlab/provenance-lib-core';

// ************************************************
// Setup all the interfaces and types

enum SortByOptions {
  PETAL_LENGTH = 'PETAL_LENGTH',
  PETAL_WIDTH = 'PETAL_WIDTH',
  SEPAL_LENGTH = 'SEPAL_LENGTH',
  SEPAL_WIDTH = 'SEPAL_WIDTH'
}

enum SortDirection {
  ASCENDING = 'ASCENDING',
  DESCENDING = 'DESCENDING'
}

// This is the interface which defines the state of your application. Instance of this interface will be tracked
interface ApplicationState {
  irisDatasetPath: string;
  sortConfig: {
    sortBy: SortByOptions;
    sortDirection: SortDirection;
  };
}

// The instance of the ApplicationState which will be tracked. This is also the root state in Provenance Graph
const initialState = {
  irisDatasetPath: '/path/to/dataset/iris.csv',
  sortConfig: {
    sortBy: SortByOptions.PETAL_LENGTH,
    sortDirection: SortDirection.ASCENDING
  }
};

// Initialize provenance tracking by passing root state.
const provenance = initProvenance(initialState);

// Add observers to do something on state change.

provenance.addObserver(['irisDatasetPath'], () => {
  // Dataset changed, do something
});

provenance.addObserver(['sortConfig', 'sortDirection'], (state?: ApplicationState) => {
  // Sort direction changed, do something
});

provenance.addObserver(['sortConfig', 'sortBy'], (state?: ApplicationState) => {
  // Sort by attribute changed, do something
});

// Call this when all the observers are defined.
// This is optional and only used when you want to enable sharing and loading states from URL.
// Refere documentation for advanced usage scenario.
provenance.done();

// Define actions to change various states. This can be as granular or coarse as you wish.
// The state here will be the current state which provenance passes in.
const changeSortDirection: ActionFunction<ApplicationState> = (
  state: ApplicationState,
  sortDirection: SortDirection
) => {
  state.sortConfig.sortDirection = sortDirection;
  return state;
};

const changeSortByAttribute: ActionFunction<ApplicationState> = (
  state: ApplicationState,
  sortBy: SortByOptions
) => {
  state.sortConfig.sortBy = sortBy;
  return state;
};

const changeDataset: ActionFunction<ApplicationState> = (
  state: ApplicationState,
  newFilePath: string
) => {
  state.irisDatasetPath = newFilePath;
  return state;
};

// Then apply the above actions as needed using applyAction method.
// It takes in multiple arguments. The first two are required.
// First is the label describing the event, second is the function. This can be anonymous function.
// Third is optional parameters which will be passed to the function passed as second arguments.
provenance.applyAction('Changing dataset', changeDataset, ['/path/to/new/dataset']);

Development

Clone the repository

git clone [email protected]:visdesignlab/provenance-lib-core.git

Use npm commands

• npm t: Run test suite
• npm start: Run npm run build in watch mode
• npm run test:watch: Run test suite in interactive watch mode
• npm run test:prod: Run linting and generate coverage
• npm run build: Generate bundles and typings, create docs
• npm run lint: Lints code
• npm run commit: Commit using conventional commit style (husky will tell you to use it if you haven't :wink:)

Resources

Project created using Typescript library starter by alexjoverm

Other provenance related projects

Example application using provenance. Also demonstrates how to import and export the current state of an application.

ProvVis is a library for visualizing the provenance graph created from this library.

Intent System is a tool for predicting user intent patterns when brushing in scatterplots. The intent system utilizes the provenance library to control all interaction, as well as the ProvVis library to visualize the resulting provenance graph.