Real-time : interface between MM.action and real-time event

[ClemDelp]

Hello,

i would like put my-mind in real-time, i'm using socket io to broadcast updates, now i would like to interface the real-time event to my-mind actions:

MM.action.insertNewItem
MM.actiion.removeItem
MM.action.MoveItem
etc

for example for insert a new item i need the father item, how i can get the item with its id? i can add a node to the current item put if i want add a node to a specific item how i have to do?

thank you

[ondras]

Hi @ClemDelp,

first of all, let me acknowledge that a real-time synchronization is indeed a very cool feature and I am planning on adding some kind of firebase-based sync myself, sooner or later.

Second, I am not sure whether broadcasting individual actions and re-playing them on all connected clients is the right way to go. When using firebase to maintain sync, I would try to persist the mind map state to the firebase, merging the incoming data with current design any time a subtree changes.

Finally, I am not sure I completely understand your question. Are you looking for a way to listen for MM.Actions performed (in order to broadcast them), or do you seek help with re-playing them once the server notifies you? If the latter is the case, please see https://github.com/ondras/my-mind/blob/master/src/action.js for individual MM.Action.* constructor signatures. The main problem with Actions is that they always select/focus the item being manipulated, so they are not very good at re-playing history.

[ClemDelp]

Hi Ondras,

Thank you for your fast answer,

Yes it's the second case, i'm using Backbone and i have a collection of nodes. All the collection's models have an id-father attributes used to re-build the tree under my-mind format.

Actually when a user manipulates the tree all actions are broadcasted to other users then the tree are completely reset and re-build with update data. Of course this solution is really bad for user experience.

That i would like it's something like:
collection:create -> trigger MM.action.InsertNewItem
collection:remove -> trigger MM.action.RemoveItem
collection:update-text -> trigger MM.action.SetText
collection:update-position -> trigger MM.action.MoveItem
collection:update-color -> trigger ...
...

For example for a new node:
1- The server passes me the updated model,
2- i get its id_father attributes,
3- i need to get the item corresponding to the id_father
4- and then apply MM.action.InsertNewItem with the model to id_father parent node.

And i would like apply this methode to all other actions but i can find actually a function to select an item by its id. I don't know excatly where is the collection of nodes? In the localstorage?

[ondras]

The map itself (instanceof MM.Map) is available as MM.App.map. You can navigate its nodes using getRoot() and getChildren() calls.

The catch is that individual items do not expose their IDs; to find an item by ID, you will have to call its .toJSON() method and look at the id field in the resulting object.

Adding a MM.Map.prototype.getItemById might be a good idea, what do you think?

[ClemDelp]

Thank you, with this three functions i can now get the item by it ID :

MM.Map.prototype.getItemById = function(id){
var nodes = MM.getItemsCollection();
return nodes[id];
}

MM.getItemsCollection = function(){
var json_map = MM.App.map.getRoot();
var nodes = {};
var nodes = MM.getNodesRecursive(nodes,json_map);
return nodes;
}

MM.getNodesRecursive = function(nodes,json){
nodes[json._id] = json;
if(json.getChildren()){
json.getChildren().forEach(function(child){
MM.getNodesRecursive(nodes,child);
});
}
return nodes;
}

I will try now to connect my Backbone events to my_mind MM.action