XML option browser

Mahks

I like the lack of quotation marks in Yaml.
I don't understand how it knows the difference between a variable name and its contents.

ie;

mapName: Total World War
mapCategory: BEST
url: https://github.com/triplea-maps/total_world_war/archive/master.zip
version: 5

how does it deal with the 2 colons on the url line?

redrum

@mahks Must have colon then space for key: value. I believe you can also use single quotes around a string if it happens to have a colon then space but is part of the string (key: 'part1: part2'. Generally, you only put 1 key/value pair per line.

Mahks

@redrum said in XML option browser:

@mahks @LaFayette My thought is put a JSON or YAML file at the root of the tripleA project just like the triplea_maps.yaml. Then have the necessary HTML/JS/CSS in the website project that pulls in that file and create a new area in the website to show this map making wiki. Thoughts?

I would like to see the tool able to be used off line. Not sure how important that is to others. For that, it would be ideal to have only one file that contains all HTML/JS/CSS & JSON.

Maybe those in the community that normally update the POS2 or YAML, could look at the JSON data in the XOB document and tell us if they would be able to update that data format directly. If so things become very simple. If not we then need at least 2 files and a conversion process.

Having the XOB page within the TA page is neither here nor there as it would most likely be in a separate tab or window if in use. I personally would want a stand alone page just to maximize screen real estate.

redrum

@mahks Probably could just offer a download from the website that either just downloads all the HTML/JS/CSS/JSON in a folder that could run locally or even as say a PDF or something. That should be relatively easy since to get it on the website it would be pulling all of those together anyways.

RoiEX

@Mahks I don't think having an inlined all-in-one page fits the structure of our website.
Of course we could just upload the file and leave everything as-is, but if we want to align the design with a website we'd want to use the existing css that's being kept seperate in its own css file.
So if we want to drop offline support I have a pretty good strategy that'll make everything pretty easy to read.
I'd actually prefer seperate files per entry, the opposite of @redrum's idea.
This way everything is way more structured and easier accessible.
Also when creating a new entry one would just create a new file which is pretty straightforward IMO.
Also we could give "context" a special treatment so that the xml can just get pasted at the end of the file without having to to any escaping.

LaFayette

Thanks for feedback.

To build on how yaml knows about the double colon, it knows based on the first letter after the first colon. There are three choices, 'string', 'list', or 'map', if it sees a [, it's a list, { for a map, and any letter is a string value. You can also do lists in a different syntax, multi-line as:

list_name:
 - a
 - b
 - c
same_list_values: [ 'a' , 'b', c' ]

And for a map:

map_name:
  - property_a: 1
  - property_b: 2 
map_name { 'a': 1, 'b': 2 }

And you can nest these, so hence why we have a superset of JSON.

YAML provides block values with native HTML without any escaping, so it's just a nicer format to work with and avoids the error prone syntax requirements of JSON.

The idea is that we basically structure a YAML to match the needed JSON, work with the YAML by hand, and use software to do the relatively simple conversion to JSON and upload to website (we have an existing pattern for doing that).

All that aside, simply hosting the HTML directly on the triplea website is a good first option! : )

That would be just plopping the file in: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea-game.github.io; Then it'll be available from http://triplea-game.org/theFileName.html

LaFayette

Sounded to me like offline support was in-lieu of online support. The most brute-force option here is to just host on website as an html.

Overall it seems we are weighing three options:

maintain the data as an html file (post-render) hosted directly on website repo.
create dynamic html page that is hosted on website repo, feed the page a JSON payload that is rendered from a YML file
create dynamic html page that is hosted on website repo, feed the page a JSON payload that is rendered from a set of input files (eg: all files in a given folder)

Let me know @RoiEX if I mischaracterized the recommendation.

RoiEX

@LaFayette Seems right.
However I'd like to point out option 2 and 3 do not work well offline.

Mahks

Update:

Added alpha buttons
Hierarchical index now expands & collapses

XOB Update

Mahks

Update:

Search option added
Navigation to previous object added.
Fixed off-line issues.

XOB Update

General_Zod

@mahks Nice job.

Hepps

@mahks Glad to see this is still alive. Well done fine sir!

butterw

The hierarchical index is great tool for anyone trying to understand what is possible with triplea game scenario .xml. POS2 can be a bit hard to read and take in.

LaFayette

@butterw POS2 is out of date in places as well : |

cameron

is this still getting updated? it looks like @Mahks hasn't posted in several years...

wondering if anyone can fix the entry for "carrierCapacity" as it's example is for "carrierCost".

actually, while on the subject of corrections, can we get all the examples to use " (double quotes) instead of ' (single quotes)? such a pain having to edit when copy/pasting and missing one...

LaFayette

@cameron

@Myrd was doing some work to move the XOB to the official TripleA website.

It is kinda available here, but does not yet render nicely:
https://triplea-game.org/xob/XOB.html

cameron

good to know it's not been abandoned.

although that link just displayed the code for me...

LaFayette

@cameron Indeed; not sure what is more needed to get it to actually "render". I was happy to see it be picked back up as well.

cameron

i copypasted the text into notepad and deleted the
"Line wrap
<!DOCTYPE HTML>"
bit at the front and saved it as an .html file and now it works in my browser (firefox).

LaFayette

It is interesting that works. Seemingly it is the web browser auto-attaching the 'doctype' part.

Here is the raw contents of the file, notice it is missing that doctype line:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea-game.github.io/blob/master/xob/XOB.html

For comparison: https://triplea-game.org/xob/XOB.html

What else, I'm not able to apply the same trick as you. If I save the file & open it - I see similar results as 'https://triplea-game.org/xob/XOB.html'