Re: pgAdmin 4 1.0-beta4 - Query Tool, Select file popup issues

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 6:13 PM, vnicolici <vladnc(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> There is all this talk about web browsers, and server instances shared by
> multiple users. While that is nice to have in some situations, me and the
> other people in my team currently have no use for that.
>

Maybe not, but others do.

>
>
> My use case is installing pgAdmin locally on my workstation as an
> application that will run standalone (what you call the “desktop runtime”),
> not as an web app. And having the various SQL files that I use to do my
> development and ops work locally on my computer.
>
>
>
> This means I need to be able to navigate files and folders quickly with an
> easy to use UI, that is preferably the OS native dialog.
>
>
>
> As it is now, by default I have to click a lot of folders until I reach
> the local folder with the SQL files. And it doesn’t even remember the last
> folder used. If I want to open another file, I need to navigate through the
> hierarchy of folders again. There is no history of previously open files,
> and it doesn’t allow me to pin favorite folders. I can’t type folder / file
> names and have them autocomplete automatically.
>

Which are issues we fully intend to resolve.

>
>
> In theory, alls this could be implemented as features in the non-native
> file dialog. But I think it would be much easier from a development point
> of view and better for the users to just use the native OS file dialog for
> standalone client installations (the desktop runtime).
>

As I've pointed out a number of times now, it is not possible to use the
native file dialogues because of the security imposed by webkit (the same
browser engine as is used in Chrome and Safari). Those security measures
minimise the use of the dialogues to downloading files and form based
uploads, which would make use of them very cumbersome for this purpose. We
wouldn't be able to track recently used files and allow them to be opened
from a menu, nor would we be able to to "Save" a file - it would always be
"Save As", with no way for us to control the default directory (even if it
was a file you just opened).

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

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