Research Vocabularies Australia Changelog
This is the changelog for the Portal and Registry software of Research Vocabularies Australia.
See also Research Vocabularies Australia other service updates for a log of other service-related changes not listed here.
Version 2.0.18
Deployment to demo: 23 April 2024
Deployment to production: 30 April 2024
(Enhancement) Portal: offer a YASGUI link for each SPARQL endpoint
The Portal’s view page for a vocabulary shows a button “Show SPARQL Endpoint” for each of the vocabulary’s versions that provides one. When you click that button, the SPARQL endpoint is displayed. Until now, that endpoint was linked, so that if you clicked the link, you got a new browser tab/window with its location set to the URL of the endpoint. In general, that meant that you saw only the message “Missing parameter: query". This was correct, but not very helpful.
Now, the endpoint is not linked. Instead:
After the endpoint URL is shown, there’s a button that you can click to copy the endpoint to your clipboard.
Below the endpoint URL, there’s a link to open an instance of YASGUI (GitHub), configured with the endpoint URL and an example SPARQL query.
Version 2.0.17
Deployment to demo: 26 March 2024
Deployment to production: 2 April 2024
(Defect) Portal: some Portal pages use arms.combine.css, but that references image URLs that don’t resolve
Some Portal pages use arms.combine.css. That file references some images, but the URLs of those images didn't resolve correctly. (They returned a 404 page.) The defect is not noticeable in a browser, as the particular web pages don't use the components of the CSS that include those images. But web crawlers (such as NLA’s Trove) do notice.
The URLs of the images have been corrected. Two images referenced in arms.combine.css were missing from the Portal; they have been added.
(Defect) Portal: don't hide the "Show the other superseded versions" button until it's clicked
In Version 2.0.9, we made a Portal enhancement “Improve view page when there are many versions”. However, that enhancement contained a defect. On view pages that, on page load, offer the "Show the other superseded versions" button, if you first clicked a version other than the currently-selected one to open it, the "Show the other superseded versions" button disappeared.
The defect has been fixed. Now, you may freely select any of the versions displayed on page load, and the "Show the other superseded versions" button will remain visible; it will only disappear when you click it.
Version 2.0.16
Deployment to demo: 12 March 2024
Deployment to production: 19 March 2024
(Enhancement) Portal: in the browse visualisation, don't offer the expand all/collapse all buttons if the vocabulary is flat
The top left of the browse visualisation shown on vocabulary view pages offers two buttons, to expand and collapse the hierarchy of the vocabulary.
If a vocabulary’s visualisation is "flat", i.e., there is no hierarchy (e.g., indicating broader/narrower terms, or membership of collections and/or concept schemes), then clicking those buttons wouldn’t have any effect.
The browser visualisation no longer shows the expand all/collapse all buttons in such cases.
(Defect) Registry: disallow vocabulary and version titles that give empty slugs
It was possible to create a vocabulary with a vocabulary or version title containing only non-alphanumeric characters (e.g., “!#$%“). The result was a vocabulary in which the generated vocabulary and/or version slug was an empty string. In the case of a vocabulary slug, this made it impossible to make updates to the vocabulary using the Portal CMS.
The Registry’s validation processes now reject any attempt to add or update a vocabulary in which a vocabulary or version slug generated from a title would be an empty string.
(Enhancement) Portal: use Jira Cloud feedback collector
The “Feedback” button shown at the bottom right of the Portal’s pages now brings up a form that submits feedback to Jira Cloud.
Version 2.0.15
Deployment to demo: 27 February 2024
Deployment to production: 5 March 2024
(Defect) Registry and documentation: properly forbid creation of user-specified Sesame Download access points
There were some inconsistencies within and between the user documentation of the validation of Sesame Download access points, the Registry’s implementation of that validation, and other design documentation. The user documentation and the corresponding implementation have been made consistent with the design documentation: user-specified Sesame Download access points are now rejected during validation, as intended.
(Enhancement) Portal: don't fall through to the Registry for non-existent Portal assets files
The Portal has been interpreting certain types of invalid request URLs as requests for the view page of a vocabulary with vocabulary slug assets. These requests are now caught by the Portal, and a normal “404”-type response is sent. One particular cause of these requests has also been eliminated.
(Defect) Portal: fix an XSS injection defect
A low-risk cross-site scripting defect in the Portal has been removed.
Version 2.0.14
Deployment to demo: 13 February 2024
Deployment to production: 20 February 2024
(Enhancement) Portal CMS: allow owner to be changed
In the days of the combined Portal-Registry RVA, once a vocabulary was created, there was no way for a user to change the vocabulary’s owner.
Since 2019, the Registry now allows for the owner of a vocabulary to be changed, i.e., to any one of the user’s organisational roles. However, this has had to be done using a direct Registry API call; there was still no ability to make this change using the Portal CMS.
The CMS has now been modified so that the Owner field remains a dropdown just like on the “Add a new Vocabulary” page, so that the user can change the value of the Owner field to any one of their organisational roles.
(Enhancement) Portal: add browse links next to search box
The Portal’s front page has links to browse all vocabularies and to browse all concepts. These links haven’t previously been shown on any other Portal page.
Those links have now been added next to the “Using search” link in the header of all other Portal pages.
(Defect) Registry: re-run Sesame import on PoolParty unharvest
It's possible to have a version that has a Sesame repository with content imported both from PoolParty and from one or more files. But if you subsequently edited the version and switched off the import from PoolParty, this had no effect on the contents of the Sesame repository.
Now, if you do that, the Sesame repository will be cleared out and the content from the files will be re-imported, so that the repository will then contain only the content from the files.
Version 2.0.13
Deployment to demo: 12 December 2023
Deployment to production: 19 December 2023
(Defect) Portal: work with CMS tooltip content coming from Scroll Viewport
The CMS page’s tooltip content has been migrated to this documentation server. The Portal has been updated to cope with changes to the structure of the HTML of that content.
(Defect) Portal: change vocabulary widget default endpoint to the correct value
The Vocabulary Widget’s JavaScript code defines a default value of the endpoint setting. We document that value publicly (at https://documentation.ardc.edu.au/rva/vocabulary-widget). The problem is: that default value doesn't work.
The default value for the endpointsetting has been changed to the correct value to use for the production server: https://vocabs.ardc.edu.au/apps/vocab_widget/proxy/. The documentation has been updated to match.
(Enhancement) Portal: link to ARDC’s top-level privacy policy instead of using a locally-hosted version
The Portal’s own privacy policy page has been removed. The links to it have updated to point to the top-level ARDC privacy policy instead.
Version 2.0.12
Deployment to demo: 28 November 2023
Deployment to production: 5 December 2023
(Enhancement) Portal: improve PoolParty project selection interface when adding a new vocabulary
When adding a new vocabulary from PoolParty, you type in some text to filter the list of PoolParty projects. There can be many matches, and it can be tedious to enter enough text to make the desired project visible for selection. Further, the last project in the filtered list was being cut off by the page footer. Also, although the filtering also applied to project IDs, the ID values were not shown in the filtered content, making it difficult to confirm that you were entering the correct value.
The project selection has been reimplemented, using the type of widget already used for Related Entity selection. The project selection process is now more convenient. Project ID values are shown, you can scroll in the filtered list, and the list is no longer cut off by the page footer.
(Defect) Portal: make text-like buttons behave more like buttons
There are many elements in the Portal user interface that appear as forward links, but which are in fact buttons, and behave as buttons. If you have your browser’s status bar enabled, these elements showed a URL in the status bar when you hovered over them. You were then able to middle-click the element, or to right-click and select a menu option to open the link in a new/tab or window. But you were not supposed to be able to do that: if you did, you got a new tab/window with content that might well be unrelated to the element. Because these elements are button-like, you are only supposed to be able to left-click to activate them.
(For the technically-minded: these are typically <a> HTML elements which have an empty or “placeholder” href attribute, such as href="", href="#", or href="javascript:". Such values for the href attribute were often used to keep older browsers “happy”. But they are wrong, and in any case, modern browsers no longer need such tricks.)
All such elements have been corrected, to behave more as buttons. You will no longer see a URL in the browser status bar when you hover over them. If you are using an operating system/browser combination that switches the cursor to a hand pointer when you hover over a button, you will see that happen also when you hover over these elements.
Approximately 90 places in the Portal user interface have been fixed in this way.
(Defect) Registry and Portal: make licence types consistent
The list of supported vocabulary licence values was not consistent between the Portal and the Registry. These changes have been made to bring them into alignment:
Portal: the CMS dropdown’s list of licences now includes the value “CSIRODataLicence”.
Registry: the licence value “CSIRODataLicence” will now be recognized, and indexed as “Non-Commercial Licence”.
Registry: the licence value “ODB-By” will now be recognized, and indexed as “Open Licence”.
Registry Schema: the values “CSIRODataLicence” and “Unknown/Other” have been added to the Registry Schema documentation for the licence attribute.
Version 2.0.11
Deployment to demo: 31 October 2023
Deployment to production: 7 November 2023
(Defect) Registry: index the “most suitable” version of a vocabulary, which might be a superseded version
In Version 2.0.8, we made a Portal enhancement “Sort superseded versions with the same release date in reverse order of version slug” and fixed a Portal defect “Display a vocabulary better when it has only superseded versions”. We now make corresponding changes in the Registry’s indexing of vocabularies; those changes in turn affect Portal search results pages.
There's now a consistent notion of the “most suitable” version of a vocabulary across Registry and Portal. If a vocabulary has a current version, that is deemed to be its “most suitable” version. Otherwise, if the vocabulary has at least one superseded version, the version with the most recent release date (disambiguated by version slug) is deemed to be the “most suitable” version.
Instead of only ever indexing the current version of a vocabulary, now its “most suitable” version will be indexed. Therefore, for vocabularies that have only superseded versions, the presence/absence of the “widgetable” icon in a search result will now match its presence/absence on the vocabulary’s view page. Similarly, the facet counts for access points are now based on the “most suitable” versions of vocabularies.
(Defect) Registry and Portal: improve validation of URL and URI metadata
The Registry and Portal have been too forgiving in their validation of URL and URI values entered in vocabulary and related entity identifier metadata. Now, where a URL or URI is expected, somewhat stricter validation is applied.
When specifying an access point of type “Web page” or “API/SPARQL”, you must specify a URL with scheme either http, https, or ftp. The placeholder text shown in the text area was incorrectly URI; it has now been corrected to URL.
The Portal’s validation of related entity identifiers of identifier type URI is unchanged, but the placeholder and error message for URIs now clarify by example that URIs that are not also URLs may also be specified. On the other hand, the Registry’s validation of URIs is now stricter.
When URIs are displayed in related entity popups on vocabulary view pages, they are now only hyperlinked if their scheme is either http, https, or ftp.
(Defect) Registry: silently provide correct values of subject notations and labels, where available
When you create or update a vocabulary, you provide one or more subjects as metadata. If you do this using the Portal, the notation and label information for subjects drawn from the ANZSRC FoR/SEO, and GCMD vocabularies is filled in correctly. However, if you are using the Registry API, you could provide incorrect notation and label data, and the Registry accepted it without any validation. This is now no longer the case. For the subject sources ANZSRC FoR/SEO, and for GCMD, the subject notations and labels are looked up in the Registry’s database, and those values are used instead, overriding any values sent to the Registry.
(Defect) Portal: show publisher popups when the content contains a single quote
A vocabulary’s publishers are shown in the top panel of its view page. You can click a publisher title to display a popup with that publisher’s details. However, if those details included a single quote anywhere, the popup displayed the text of an error message instead. This has been fixed. Now, the popup will display the contents correctly.
Version 2.0.10
Deployment to demo: 3 October 2023
Deployment to production: 10 October 2023
(Defect) Portal: ensure logging of CMS actions
The Portal’s vocabulary edit page, known as the CMS, requests the addition of a log entry for the final user action performed, e.g., Publish. Under certain circumstances, the Portal’s request to add the log entry could be cancelled by the web browser before being sent to the server. Now, the browser will ensure that the request is sent before displaying the result of the user action.
(Enhancement) Portal: replace references to "Twitter" with "𝕏"
The service Twitter has been rebranded as 𝕏. This name is now used for share buttons in the page footer and on vocabulary view pages, on the social login page, and in the privacy policy.
Version 2.0.9
Deployment to demo: 19 September 2023
Deployment to production: 26 September 2023
(Enhancement) Portal: improve view page when there are many versions
A vocabulary’s view page shows its versions in a panel at the left-hand side. When there are many versions, navigating the rest of the page can become cumbersome.
Now, when the view page is loaded, if the vocabulary has more than five superseded versions, only the most recent five will be shown at first, and there will be a link “Show the other superseded versions”, which can be clicked to show all of the remaining superseded versions.
(Enhancement) Registry and Portal: add “funder” to list of relationships for related parties
When adding a Related Party to a vocabulary, one or more relationships are specified, such as “publisher”, “contributor”, “point of contact”, etc. Now, there is an additional relationship which can be specified: “funder”.
Version 2.0.8
Deployment to demo: 22 August 2023
Deployment to production: 29 August 2023
(Fix defect) Portal: on view page and CMS, force wrapping of long content in Related panel
Both the Portal’s vocabulary view page and the CMS (the Portal’s page for adding or editing a vocabulary) have a right-hand side “Related” panel for displaying related entities. Content in these boxes was not always wrapped, with the result that it could extend outside the panel. This was particularly problematic in the CMS, as it could make it difficult to access the delete button for an entity.
This has been fixed. Now, long content is forced to wrap so that it always fits within the width of the panel.
(Fix defect) Portal: display all constraint violations, even if there are duplicate violation messages
Under most circumstances, the Portal’s page for adding or editing a vocabulary (known as the CMS) doesn’t allow a user to click either the “Publish”, “Deprecate”, or “Save to draft” buttons until and unless the form’s fields have been filled in correctly. However, there are some cases in which, after clicking one of those three buttons, the Registry’s validation process may detect errors in one or more fields that the Portal didn’t notice. These errors are reported to the user below the three buttons.
However, if the Registry reported more than one occurrence of the same error, none of the error messages were displayed in the Portal. In that case, it could appear to the user that the Portal was not responding to the buttons.
This has been fixed. Now, the Portal will display all of the error messages that come back from the Registry. But there is an additional, better enhancement: in the case of a repeated error message, the Registry typically also provides information about the location of the error, as guidance to the user. The Portal was not previously displaying this information. The Portal now displays that location information alongside the error message. Therefore, in practice, users shouldn’t see exactly identical messages; duplicate messages will be distinguished with location information.
(Fix defect) Portal: Display a vocabulary better when it has only superseded versions
The Portal did not display a vocabulary well if it has only superseded versions. It did not offer the browse visualisation, even if one was available. And the widget demo was configured with the oldest superseded version, rather than the newest.
This is now fixed. For a vocabulary with only superseded versions, if the most recent superseded version has a browse visualisation available, it will be displayed. And if the most recent superseded version is “widgetable”, the widget demo will be configured with that version.
Note that the meaning of “most recent” has also changed; see the following enhancement.
(Enhancement) Registry (and Portal): Sort superseded versions with the same release date in reverse order of version slug
On the Portal view page, superseded versions are presented in reverse order of their release dates. However, if two or more versions have exactly the same release date, those versions have appeared in an apparently random order. The order was not random, but it was probably not correct, either. Since there is (at present) no way to indicate within the vocabulary metadata what the correct order is, the Registry now makes a “better guess”: superseded versions with the same release date will now be sent to the Portal in reverse order of their version slugs, and the Portal will present them in that order. (The use of slugs within RVA is explained at this page: Vocabulary Registry data.) For example, if there are versions with the same release date with version titles (and therefore also their slugs) “04”, “06”, and “05”, the versions will be shown in the sequence “06”, “05”, “04”.
Version 2.0.7
Deployment to demo: 15 August 2023
Deployment to production: 22 August 2023
(Fix defect) Registry: close GeoLite database on webapp shutdown
The Registry uses the GeoLite City database as part of its analytics collection. There was a memory leak in the Registry webapp; the GeoLite database was not closed on webapp shutdown. Over time, successive releases of the database remained open, consuming memory.
The Registry now closes the GeoLite database during webapp shutdown.
Version 2.0.6
Deployment to demo: 1 August 2023
Deployment to production: 8 August 2023
(Fix defect) Portal (and Registry): Update links to documentation.ardc.edu.au to use new URL structure
The ARDC public documentation site documentation.ardc.edu.au has been updated, and the URLs of all pages have changed. The links in the Portal (and Registry) to documentation pages have been updated to point to the new URLs.
(Fix defect) Portal: Use Twitter API v2 for Twitter logins
The Portal supports logging in using a Twitter login. Recent changes to Twitter policy caused this feature to stop working. The Portal now uses new credentials and version 2 of the Twitter API, and Twitter logins are working again. (Please note: Facebook logins are currently not working, for a similar reason.)
(Fix defect) Portal: For Twitter logins, incorporate the user’s full name in the display name
When using a Twitter login to log in to the Portal, the display name (shown on the My Vocabs page) was only the user’s Twitter handle. Now, it also includes the user’s “real” name. For example, “My Real Name (@myHandle)“.
Version 2.0.5
Deployment to demo: 18 July 2023
Deployment to production: 25 July 2023
(Fix defect) Registry: support importing content into the Repository when a version has both RDF and non-RDF file uploads
You can upload multiple files with content for the same version. As soon as you upload a file in one of the supported RDF formats, you're allowed to toggle on the "Import version into the ARDC Vocabulary Repository" switch. But having uploaded a file in one of the supported RDF formats, you can then also upload a file in a non-RDF format, e.g., PDF. If you did that, and also toggled on that switch, publication of the version partially failed. Now, this is supported. The Registry will only attempt to import (i.e., into the Sesame repository) those files that are in the supported RDF formats.
(Fix defect) Registry: support downloading of PDF files using Download links associated with a version
Until now, "Download" links for previously-uploaded PDF files didn't work. If you clicked one of these links; you saw an error message on an otherwise blank page. This has now been fixed.
Version 2.0.4
Deployment to demo: 13 June 2023
Deployment to production: 20 June 2023
(Fix defect) Portal: fix broken link on "Publish a vocabulary" help page
The help page Publish a vocabulary includes a link to documentation about the RVA editor. The target page was moved, so that the link became broken. This change updates the link to point to the correct URL.
(Fix defect) Registry: fix links to vocabularies in notification emails
The Registry sends notification emails to users who have a subscription to vocabulary updates. The emails include links to the view pages of the vocabularies which have been updated. If a vocabulary with ID greater than or equal to 1000 was updated, the link's URL incorrectly included a comma in the vocabulary ID as a thousands separator. This change removes that comma, so that the URLs are now correct.
Version 2.0.3
Deployment to demo: 23 May 2023
Deployment to production: 30 May 2023
(Enhancement) Portal and Registry: allow filtering on and display of SKOS altLabels in browse visualisation
The Portal view page offers a browse visualisation for vocabularies encoded in SKOS. Some resource metadata is displayed in tooltips that are displayed when hovering over resources in the visualisation, and the set of resources shown in the visualisation can be restricted by entering a value in the "Filter..." field. This change adds support for the display of SKOS altLabel metadata in resource tooltips and in the filtering.
Version 2.0.2
Deployment to demo: 2 May 2023
Deployment to production: 9 May 2023
(Enhancement) Portal: show ads for researcher resources on search results and view pages
ARDC is running a campaign to promote resources for researchers: some generic, some specific to particular research domains. This change adds some "ads" for this campaign to the search results page and to vocabulary view pages. There are also links to research guides added within the top menu and the page footer.
Version 2.0.1
Deployment to demo: 4 April 2023
Deployment to production: 11 April 2023
(Fix defect) Portal: make "Show SPARQL Endpoint" links work when there are multiple SPARQL endpoints for the same version
There can be multiple SPARQL endpoints for the same version. There was a defect in the Portal's view page such that clicking one of the "Show SPARQL Endpoint" links in this case caused all of the version's SPARQL endpoints to be shown, but didn't also make the other "Show SPARQL Endpoint" link(s) disappear. Now, each "Show SPARQL Endpoint" link works independently.
(Enhancement) Portal: support the display of a header banner for informational messages
The Portal now supports the display of a header banner for messages. The banner will be used to communicate information about maintenance window periods and other important information related to the operation of the service. On the demo server, this banner is additional to the existing "Demonstration Environment" header banner.