MapStory states for Composer: introducing autosave and staged changes to the data model

[glynnis]

Prior planning for this issue can be found in #273.

Draft

If a published story is withdrawn to make it private, or a story that has never been published. Drafts may be work in progress that a user returns to in subsequent logins.

Data associated with a draft:

• story metadata
• chapter metadata
• story layers (layer order, masking associated with the layers+legend, layer styles)
• story pins
• story frames
• playback settings

Story (public)

A story that is visible to other users and searchable via Explore. A public story is created by publishing a draft.

Staged changes (draft)

Changes associated with either previously published stories or with a draft that has never been published. These changes are saved and "staged" so the user can return to them at a later time, even if they haven't published them.

A user can continue to stage changes repeatedly using autosave or manual save. Saving staged changes doesn't ever result in publishing their work. Publishing is distinct and separate step in the UI.

Data model:

• Two fields, "draft" and "published"
• When staged changes get published, we copy fields from "draft" into "published"
• Local storage may be in play here
• Confirmation dialog/alert to communicate to user that they must publish if they want their changes to be reflected on the site.

Discard draft

A user may choose to delete a draft or a published story at any time. A user may also want to discard all the staged changes on a draft. For example: they are illustrating to a coworker how to use Composer and autosave kicks in. They don't want those staged changes saved by autosave to stick around, so they choose to discard the staged changes and revert to the published version of their story.

[glynnis]

@sarasafavi and I chatted, and I thought it'd be helpful to make a more complete diagram of the possible story states that are detailed above (that's not just a whiteboard drawing):