Give components "friendly" slugs on creation

[bradenmacdonald]

Context

Currently, library components get a UUID as the unique part of their usage key, and this makes for long/ugly URLs and is unhelpful when viewing a list of component IDs.

Requirements

1. As an author, when I create a new component, it should be assigned a "friendly slug" based on whatever name I put in the editor before first saving changes.
2. Later edits to the component may change the name, but should not affect the slug. (We don't want the ID changing after a component has been published/used.)

Example:

Putting this text in the editor modal

Should result in this slug:

Obviously, make sure the slug is unique.

Note that the Learning Core API does allow changing the slug after creation, so if necessary the workflow can be: generate UUID slug -> launch editor -> rename usage key based on display name at first save

(In future versions, we may want to just make the slug editable for any components that have never been published or even better, never been used in a course)

[bradenmacdonald]

@jmakowski1123 New story, but based on things we've discussed - please review.

[rpenido]

Note that the Learning Core API does allow changing the slug after creation, so if necessary the workflow can be: generate UUID slug -> launch editor -> rename usage key based on display name at first save

@bradenmacdonald
I'm a bit worried about changing the slug after creation. Here are some questions and concerns!

1. How do we define this "first save"?
   • If the user creates the component and hits "Cancel" in the editor, should we keep the slug as the UUID?
   • Would it count as a "first save" if he edits this component some days later?
2. We may have tags associated (async) with the component on creation. If we change the UUID we would also need to move these tags
3. We might have some (possible, but unlikely) race conditions associated with this: simultaneous "first save"s or tagging while running the "first save"
4. Do you think it's feasible to change the flow and ask the user for the name before creating a block to avoid changing the UUID?

[bradenmacdonald]

@rpenido Since we didn't get this into Sumac, I don't think it's a huge priority anymore. It probably makes more sense to refactor the editors in the MFE so that they can be opened without having a block ID, and they only create the block once you save changes. Then we can set the slug on the initial save and it will avoid all the problems you've mentioned.

[bradenmacdonald]

CC @ormsbee ^

[rpenido]

@bradenmacdonald Should we close this issue and make it part of #1482's scope, or should we just have it as a dependency?

[bradenmacdonald]

I think we should just have #1482 as a dependency.