Folksonomy Engine/Functional use cases and specifications
Note: to see the prototype of each functional use case, you need to install Folksonomy Engine client script.
Open Food Facts' apps and API share some common basic meta-features:
- Links create value: every property or value or another thing that make sense should be linked to its documentation and groups it belong to.
- All lists should be:
- shown as table: sortable by each column; filterable; with added statistics such as number of occurrences, percentage, etc.
- downloadable: CSV and XLSX
- queried with a REST API
- All product's attributes (property/value pairs) should be queried with a REST API.
- KISS and wiki principles:
- Straight to the point.
- Everything can be modified (properties, values). Modified property/value pairs are not deleted, but archived.
- Lowering the barrier: anyone should be able to do things easily.
- Accept as many usages as we can: fields are not constrained and anyone should enter anything as a new property or a new value. Organisation will come later.
- If possible, main lists of products should be proposed as facets, with the possibility to be mixed with other Open Food Facts facets [create a non-blocking issue]
1. The user asks the list of properties/values pairs for a given product.
- The user selects a product (link, search result, etc.).
- The system shows the product, with the list of property/value pairs.
Rationale: this is the main usage of Folksonomy Engine. It allows to know that a product has some particular properties which are not in the traditional Open Food Facts data model.
Questions:
- should this use case allow to download all the property/value pairs at one time: the ones from the traditional data model, and the ones from Folksonomy Engine ?
Prototype (beta): https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/9310036071174/paul-s-caramel-custard
2. The user enters a new property/value pair for a given product.
- The user selects a product (link, search result, etc.).
- The system shows the product, with a form to enter a new property/value.
- The user enters the property (see dedicated functional use case 2.1).
- The user enters the value (see dedicated functional use case 2.2).
- The user asks the system to save the property/value pair.
- The system checks for user authentication [this part is not detailed].
- The system saves the property/value pair, with some metadata: the date and time of modification, the version, the username, and optionally a comment.
- The system archives the old property/value pair and its metadata, if any.
Rationale: to discover new properties, they have to be entered by people. Open Food Facts is a project opened to any kind of editors.
Prototype (beta): https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/9310036071174/paul-s-caramel-custard
3. The user asks for the whole list of properties.
- The user asks for the whole list of properties: links located:
- somewhere near the list of properties/values pairs for a given product
- anywhere else
- The system shows the list of all the properties with, for each property, the number of products and the number of different values.
- It should be a list for the given context: the list corresponding to the products present in the current context, eg. Open Products Facts (create specific non-blocking issue).
Rationale: the list of all properties allows:
- To explore the different properties and their usages.
- To forecast the evolution of properties and their usages.
- To observe which are the most used and the properties which are not really used.
Prototype (beta): https://world.openfoodfacts.org/keys
4. The user asks for the whole list of products with a particular property.
- The user asks for the whole list of products with a particular property (link from the list of properties, link from a product's page using this property).
- The system returns:
- The list of all products using this property; for each product: the product's barcode, optionally the product name, the product's photo, the last modification date, the editor of the property, the value.
- The link to the property's documentation.
Rationale: the list of products with a particular property allows:
- To explore all the product with a particular property.
- To forecast the evolution of products with a particular property.
- To observe which are the most used and the properties which are not really used.
Prototype (beta): https://world.openfoodfacts.org/key/packaging:has_character
5. The user asks for the whole list of products with a particular property/value pair.
- The user asks for the whole list of products with a particular property/pair (link from a product's page using this property/value pair).
- The system returns:
- The list of all products using this property; for each product: the product's barcode, optionally the product name, the product's photo, the last modification date, the editor of the property.
- The link to the property's documentation.
Rationale: this use case allows hundreds of new usages; eg. listing all the products that have been recalled last month; all products that are blue; etc.
Prototype (beta): https://world.openfoodfacts.org/key/packaging:has_character/value/yes
2.1. The user enters a property for a given product.
- The user starts typing the name of a property.
- The system suggests back all properties containing these letters (beginning at the second letter).
- The user selects a property or continues to type.
- Back to use case 2.
2.2 The user enters the value.
- If possible, the system suggests some values based on the current values already given for the property.
- The user starts typing the content of the value.
- The system suggests back all current values related to this property and containing these letters (beginning at the second letter).
- The user selects a value or continues to type.
- Back to use case 2.
Questions
- For transparency reasons (and maybe for other reasons):
- Should we provide a use case to let the user see the history of property/value pairs for each product? Version 2?
- Should we provide a use case to let the users see the history of all property/value pairs for all product(something like the "recent changes" in Mediawiki/Wikipedia)? Version 2?
- Should we immediately provide use cases related to private property/value pairs?
- Should these use cases take care of stocks issues?