Permit nestable LocationTypes (region-like)

[glennmatthews]

As ...

Austin - Network Automation Engineer

I want ...

To represent my organizational data as a LocationTypes/Locations hierarchy that may have a variable number of intermediary "layers", similar to the current Region model. In other words, I want to be able to represent a hierarchy like:

• North America (1)
  • United States (2)
    • Eastern US (2)
      • Atlanta (3)
      • Athens (3)
• EMEA (1)
  • Western Europe (1)
    • Spain (2)
      • Madrid (3)

where (1), (2), and (3) are my distinct LocationTypes. Note that the hierarchy (1 is a parent of 2, 2 is a parent of 3) is the same across the data, but additionally a 1 may have another 1 as its child and a 2 may have another 2 as its child, to model the case where a given location of that type does or does not have relevant sub-locations of that same general type.

The goal here is to avoid having to define multiple redundant location types in order to represent a hierarchy like the above, i.e., under the current LocationType model restrictions, this data would have to be modeled with seven distinct LocationTypes instead of three:

• North America (1)
  • United States (2)
    • Eastern US (2a)
      • Atlanta (3a)
      • Athens (3a)
• EMEA (1)
  • Western Europe (1a)
    • Spain (2b)
      • Madrid (3b)

So that ...

1. I can represent a hierarchy of variable depth with a minimal number of distinct LocationTypes, reducing redundancy of my data and the potential for user confusion.

2. As a foundation for Epic: Collapse Region and Site models into Location #2517, it will be straightforward to migrate an existing hierarchy of Regions into a hierarchy of LocationTypes and Locations without data loss or overly complex migration logic.

I know this is done when...

• When defining a LocationType, there is an optional checkbox allowing me to indicate that locations of this type may be self-referential or self-parented, allowing nesting of this type.
• When defining a Location, if its corresponding LocationType is configured to allow self-references, that I can make the parent of this Location either a Location matching the parent LocationType of this LocationType or a Location of the same LocationType as this one.

Optional - Feature groups this request pertains to.

• Automation
• Circuits
• DCIM
• IPAM
• Misc (including Data Sources)
• Organization
• Plugins (and other Extensibility)
• Security (Secrets, etc)
• Image Management
• UI/UX
• Documentation
• Other (not directly a platform feature)

Database Changes

Added checkbox/boolean field on LocationType.

External Dependencies

None.

[glennmatthews]

Implemented for 1.5 by #2616.