view_actions() hook, to avoid showing table actions on view pages that don't work

[simonw]

Spotted this on Datasette Cloud:

All those plugins forgot to check if the table was actually a view, and break if you attempt to use them!

Need something in Datasette Core to help plugins not make that mistake.

[simonw]

Some options to add to Datasette:

• await db.is_view(name) - to save you from needing to do if name in await db.view_names()
• Option: don't show table actions on the view page at all - this would at least prevent the default mistake, it's probably the best way to do it
• Could pass an is_view=True parameter to the plugin hook?

[simonw]

Or... I could add a view_actions() hook that is separate from table_actions().

I think this may be the best solution. It will very slightly break any existing plugins that expect to work on the views at the moment, but that's a good change to ship prior to 1.0 - plus I can't think of anything that will really get hurt by this. Best I can think of is that datasette-graphql won't show up on SQL views as a suggested API explorer option, which is harmless since you can still get to the GraphiQL interface and build view queries from there.

[simonw]

Documentation: https://docs.datasette.io/en/latest/plugin_hooks.html#view-actions-datasette-actor-database-view-request

[simonw]

This is wrong:

https://latest.datasette.io/fixtures/simple_view

Should say "View actions", not "Table actions".

[simonw]

... which is weird, because in the tests it seems to have the correct label.

[simonw]

... no, it's working. I hit the demo page before the demo had finished deploying.

Now https://latest.datasette.io/fixtures/simple_view looks like this: