Enhancement: Version id (fka commit id) no longer accessible in viewer - Add "Copy Latest Version ID" to Model Card Actions

[stephenburgess8]

Prerequisites

• I read the contribution guidelines
• I checked the documentation and found no answer.
• I checked existing issues and found no similar issue.
• I checked the community forum for related discussions and found no answer.
• I'm requesting the feature to the correct repository (see also speckle-server, speckle-sharp, specklepy, speckle-docs, and others)

What package are you referring to?

frontend-2 only

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

In the previous version of the speckle server, the commits page provided a view of the commit including, crucially, the commit id. Information about that can be seen on this documentation page: https://speckle.guide/user/web.html

In this image from that page, the "id" at the top refers to the id of the commit (now I believe this is called the version id). In the new version of the Speckle Server frontend, there is no equivalent view of the old "Expand Data View" of the commit object. (note: please let me know if it is available and is something that I've missed).

When using specklepy, it's necessary to know the "commit id" to get the latest model. Our team had developed a workflow where we grabbed the latest commit ID from the expanded data view of the commit object when getting a project from our server instance. It would be nice to be able to access the version id in a way similar to how we used to access the commit id when we developed that workflow.

Describe the solution you'd like

It would be nice would be to add a command to "copy the latest version ID" to the actions on the model card on the project models page.

On the Models page for the Project, each Model (fka branch) has a drop down with options to copy the model id and the link. Since this model (branch) currently has its HEAD at the latest commit/version, it would make sense in my mind to provide a way for the user to copy the commit id at HEAD.

speckle-server/packages/frontend-2/components/project/page/models/Actions.vue

Line 109 in 2ba6b24

title: 'Upload new version',

Describe alternatives you've considered

If it would be easier to make the version id copy accessible on the ViewerResourcesViewerCard that might work. That's the view showing the graphical list of versions for a model

The latest version id is used in the calculation of the props for each ViewerResourcesViewerCard. If it's accessible there I would assume it should be accessible elsewhere, hence my suggestion of adding it to the Model card dropdown..

speckle-server/packages/frontend-2/components/viewer/resources/ModelCard.vue

Line 86 in 2ba6b24

:is-latest-version="version.id === latestVersionId"

I found out that the version id is used here because the latest version id is actually embedded in the url of the preview image.

The other alternative I've considered is a purely programmatic one in python. However it's possible others may find utility from having the latest version ID easily accessible in the speckle server frontend, so I wanted to propose it.

Additional context

I have experience working with Vue so I'd be willing to give this solution a shot if that would help.

Thanks for your work on this project.

Related issues or community discussions

I searched issues and community discussions but I couldn't find another reference to this.

[didimitrie]

Hi @stephenburgess8, we've recently introduced "dev mode" which brings back a similar view of your commit in FE2: #2296

Would this be enough? Do note, we're not against adding that option to the model card (cc @benjaminvo)

[benjaminvo]

Hi @stephenburgess8! Thanks for the thorough request.

On top of what Dim says, the latest version ID is also accessible from the versions page so I'm hesitant to add it to the model card (the versions page is not easy to find though but that's a separate issue).

[stephenburgess8]

@didimitrie It's great to see the Raw Model Data view in Dev mode back again, thank you! I found out how to access it from this post: https://speckle.community/t/weekly-changelog-access-the-raw-model-data-with-dev-mode-and-more/11460

@benjaminvo In summary, as I understand it, each version of a model has both a Version Id and an object id/commit hash. An example of a Version ID for a model version is 5e9cb42780. An example of an object ID for the same model version is df837b380aefb4ff127b2e6c561943be. The former is accessible on the Version view and the latter is what specklepy needs. I'm trying to get the terminology about this correct but I apologize if I mispeak at all here.

There's a solution in specklepy to grab the latest commit as in the following pseudocode:

speckle_client = get_speckle_client(host = "https://speckle.xyz/")
stream_id = '12345'
commits = speckle_client.commit.list(stream_id)
object_id = get_object_id_of_most_recent_commit(commits)
raw_data_model = speckle_client.commit.get(stream_id, object_id)

https://github.com/specklesystems/specklepy/blob/main/src/specklepy/api/resources/commit.py#L20

Between the raw data model view and the specklepy solution to get the latest commit hash, I can access that object id again.

I wouldn't say no to having easy access to the object id alongside the version id in the version view, but it's now that the Raw Model Data view is back it's possible for me to get it from inside the web app again. I'll close this issue. Thanks for your help.