Improvements for Input Syntax

[archiewood]

Existing situtation

There are a number of rough edges with current input syntax

• Initial states are hard or sometimes impossible to set correctly
  • It may not be possible to know the values for a query before page load as they may depends on other inputs with unknown states
• Selecting all requires inlining all the query results for multiselect which can have perf implications
  • <Dropdown multiple selectAllByDefault=true/> causes
  • from table where column_name in ('a','b','c',...'z')
  • Initial state (select null where 0 /An input has not been set/) causes a query to not run on initial page load
• SQL select syntax is different for single select and multi select
  • Multi where column_name IN vs
  • Single where column_name =
• Wide differences in implementation structure of input keys
  • inputs.my_input vs inputs.my_input.value vs inputs.my_input.end
• Inputs statements are verbose to write
  • where column_name = '${inputs.my_input.value}'
• Meta: SQL is not ergonomic for writing dynamic filter statements

Possible Improvements

1. Standardise the use of IN with all select based components (docs only change)
   • Multiple: IN ${}
   • Single: ='${}' -> IN '(${})'
2. Replace all bare inputs with thing → ('thing')
   • Allows usage of IN ${} throughout all dropdown components in combination with 1.
3. Allow a select all behaviour in multi dropdowns that when there is no selection, uses the column name
   • where column_name IN ${inputs.myinput.value} -> where column_name IN column_name
   • we can use the column_name provided in the input if specified in the value prop
4. Possibly, make 3 configurable so that it can also return where column_name = '' to allow a none selection that works in all cases
5. Collapse syntax so you don't have to explicitly call "inputs" (and possibly "values")
   • {inputs.picker_name.value} → {picker_name.value}
   • {picker_name.value} → {picker_name}
6. Remove the confusing need for $ in queries
   • IN ${inputs.picker_name.value} → IN {inputs.picker_name.value}