[Feature Request]: support pull-down list in DSP input parameter entry

[yuanchi2807]

Feature description

The current UI supports pipeline input parameter entries as text boxes only.
For boolean or list entries, end users suggested a pull down menu of allowed values, such as True/False, improves user experience significantly.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Anything else?

No response

[andrewballantyne]

@yuanchi2807 As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as "boolean" in the Tekton infra. How do you propose we support knowing this field is "boolean"? cc @yannnz

Each declared parameter has a type field, which can be set to either array or string. array is useful in cases where the number of compilation flags being supplied to the Pipeline varies throughout its execution. If no value is specified, the type field defaults to string. When the actual parameter value is supplied, its parsed type is validated against the type field. The description and default fields for a Parameter are optional.

-Source

[yuanchi2807]

@andrewballantyne Not sure either. Relaying end user comments after we asked them to configure a pipeline that included True/False toggle. We asked them to literally type in True or False.
Could v2 be relevant here?
https://www.kubeflow.org/docs/components/pipelines/v2/data-types/parameters/

[andrewballantyne]

Oh interesting -- there may be metadata on the type like Elyra's task naming isn't with the Tekton PipelineRun spec 🤔

@HumairAK can you help investigate if that's the case. If there is metadata, we can definitely react on that.

[roytman]

PipelineParams have an optional field - pattern, can it be used to provide some hints to the UI. e.g. pattern = "True|False" or pattern = "split_sentence | language_identification" (if the pattern is not empty, it can be shown by the UI and the user input will be validated)

[andrewballantyne]

Most interesting of an idea... we could definitely look into this. @yannnz for the UX.

Assuming it properly reflects in the run and can be used effectively from the source of Elyra or the SDK (cc @harshad16 @HumairAK), the implementation shouldn't be too complex.

Would we look for just supporting the following types?

• unbounded strings (what we do today)
• arrays (maybe some +/- interface)
• booleans (maybe a checkbox or toggle?)
• an enum/dictionary (a dropdown list of items -- can only pick from one)

We'll have to support the pattern as needed. However, I think everything is strings or array of strings in the end. So we are still somewhat limited (maybe Booleans are just Dictionary/enums?).