bug search results are not exportable without custom software
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Launchpad itself |
Triaged
|
Low
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Symptoms
========
When users do a bug search, the search results can be browsed in-line in batches, but cannot be exported easily [there is a hidden way to export just the bug ids, but this isn't useful as an 'export'].
Some users like to take things offline (e.g. for reports), and being able to do that without custom software (e.g. Python and Launchpadlib) would be very convenient for them. Canonical OEM has customers/partners that run Windows and IE and have no ability to install custom software - so for them they simply cannot export the results of a bug search today. These users could use a 'standard' interchange format like CSV (comma separated values) quite easily.
Analysis
========
Bug searches can be arbitrarily large (e.g. 500K bugs in one search in Ubuntu). A simple view that renders such a large batch will timeout (it can be reasonably expected to take more than 20 seconds with our current stack). Other than that doing an export of bug search results in a standard flattened interchange format makes a lot of sense.
Some ways to mitigate against the timeout aspect are:
- only export some N (e.g. 1000) bugs
- ask the user how many bugs they want exported and refuse values larger than some N (e.g. 1000)
- use a backend task to do the export and store the result in the librarian
- only export one page at a time and force users to paginate and export each page
The export probably wants to export the same data we show in the matching search, giving a reasonably powerful ad-hoc reporting system.
Recommendations
===============
- do some fact checking with Canonical OEM (who are requesting this) to see whether an arbitrary limit would impact them
- if doing a backend export be sure to link it all in with longpoll so the user doesn't have to browse away from the results
- a backend export is probably the most sensible thing to do, because it will allow very large exports without rework in the future
Changed in malone: | |
assignee: | jsk → bjornt |
Changed in launchpad: | |
importance: | Medium → Low |
tags: | added: feature |
tags: | added: oem-services |
description: | updated |
summary: |
- Provide CSV export for bug listings. + bug search results are not exportable without custom software |
description: | updated |
tags: | added: api bug-search |
Intellectronica pointed out that a similar solution exists for sprints. For example:
https:/ /edge.launchpad .net/sprints/ ubuntu- it-meeting/ +attendees- csv