Setting and getting the preferences with `orcli`

[antoine2711]

Hi @felixlohmeier:

What do you think of expanding orcli to enable it to get and set preferences of OpenRefine?

Regards,
Antoine

[felixlohmeier]

That would be feasible, but I haven't seen any benefit in it yet because orcli is intended for automation and most of the setting options relate to the user interface in the browser (see https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/running#preferences). Do you have a specific use case in mind?

[antoine2711]

@felixlohmeier: yes, you are right, for automation, the UI preferences do not matter much.
But, the language one has an impact on responses from the server, so that could be good, if you want to use OpenRefine in a language, but run automated processes in English, so to have error messages that can be compared.

But, also, just like package manager installer are simplier, orcli command to set easilly many preferences could also make documentation/configuration simplier/faster.
Also, when doing a new installation, someone could have a script to set defaut preferences in a batch.

Or, in a bug report, we could ask a user to print all his preferences, with a command like orcli prefs to confirm that they are set at certain values.

Again, I’m not asking to do it, just moral support and approbation.

Regards, Antoine

[felixlohmeier]

But, the language one has an impact on responses from the server, so that could be good, if you want to use OpenRefine in a language, but run automated processes in English, so to have error messages that can be compared.

Good point!

Maybe similar to the other commands like this:

orcli preference list
orcli preference set <key> <value>

Or, in a bug report, we could ask a user to print all his preferences, with a command like orcli prefs to confirm that they are set at certain values.

orcli was intended purely for automation. Since automated processes often run in Linux environments anyway, the dependency on Bash and Linux tools is not a major obstacle. However, I am not sure whether it is worth developing orcli further in the direction of UI user, because it is difficult to provide it for Windows users without a lot of additional software (Docker, WSL). I do not see an easy way to do this yet.

[antoine2711]

Maybe similar to the other commands like this:

orcli preference list
orcli preference set <key> <value>

Sure. Is it easy to do an alias in Bashly?

orcli was intended purely for automation.

Sure. And that will stay its main focus/usage. But if your tool can help less technical people to use OR, isn’t it an added benefit? ;-)

Since automated processes often run in Linux environments anyway, the dependency on Bash and Linux tools is not a major obstacle. However, I am not sure whether it is worth developing orcli further in the direction of UI user, because it is difficult to provide it for Windows users without a lot of additional software (Docker, WSL). I do not see an easy way to do this yet.

What about Windows users with cygwin? Have you tried it/tested it?

Regards, Antoine

[felixlohmeier]

Sure. Is it easy to do an alias in Bashly?

Yes: https://github.com/DannyBen/bashly/tree/master/examples/command-aliases#readme

What about Windows users with cygwin? Have you tried it/tested it?

I haven't tried that yet.

[antoine2711]

orcli is intended for automation and most of the setting options relate to the user interface in the browser

Just to add to the need to modify preferences, here other preferences that could have an impact even in an antomation context:
wikibase.upload.maxLag
googleReadTimeOut
googleConnectTimeOut

Of course, for that, we would need to be able to push to Wikidata with orcli, or read/write to Google Drive/Sheets with orcli, which, from what I understand, is not yet the case… but that could be added, right?

Regards, Antoine