Extending Part Parameters Functionality

[bikugogo]

Hi,

I wanted to utilize part parameters and found that it sort of feels like its own separate thing because of how the UI is like its has separate table ui, search, filtering. Also regarding default part parameters you can only achieve it through category part parameter and even with that theres no way to apply that to already existing parts with that same category.

I want to extend some of its functionality and merge it in open source :

1. Running a background job to update already existing parts with the default part parameter data for a category part parameter.
2. Simplifying the UI to keep parts and part parameters more integrated through ui like in same screen and filtering parts with parametrs in part screen itself.

Please let me know your thoughts if we are okay with such a change in the opensource.

Thanks.

[matmair]

You can certainly try and provide pull requests for review. There are technical reasons why it was easier to build it that way.

If you have performant solutions we will be happy to get them into core InvenTree.

[bikugogo]

Thanks for the response. Can you tell me what was the issue you faced ? Was it mainly regarding the performance while updating the already existing parts with background job / api calls performance if we try to get part parameters associated with parts in the part screen itself.

[matmair]

1. updating default part parameter data is not a well-defined thing right now. What happens if the default value changes - does this propagate to all parts that have the old default value assigned? Is it only changed on fields where the default was used explicitly (and if yes: how is that tracked)? These things need to be defined and documented before the behavior can change.

2. Fetching parameters when displaying part list presented - the last time we tried - a significant performance drag, raising response time on reasonable deployments to over a second which feels horrible.

[bikugogo]

Thanks for sharing.

For 1. I think if a value exist for a part parameter whether default or user assigned we should let it be, that would be the best strategy. Like for example if a parameter can have yes/no selection value and default is no. let say after sometime someone adds maybe option there and default now is maybe, then only the new parts will have maybe as default.

2. This I will try to fix.