Use subscript variable and not subscript value in graphs.csv

[LSarribouette]

Hi all,

We have a VGD file that contains all the graphs linked to our model. We are automating the generation of the file graphs.csv from this VGD file.

We have a subscript for the countries and regions with about 70 possible values. For now, one line in the CSV file describes one graph with one specific value of the subscript.

Is it possible to enter directly the subscript variable and then select the value in the app?

Example with subscript value:

id,parent menu,graph title,menu title,kind,modes,units,x axis min,x axis max,x axis label,y axis min,y axis max,y axis soft max,y axis label,y axis format,plot 1 variable,plot 1 source,plot 1 style,plot 1 label,plot 1 color,plot 2 variable,plot 2 source,plot 2 style,plot 2 label,plot 2 color,plot 3 variable,plot 3 source,plot 3 style,plot 3 label,plot 3 color
1,China,Pop,socio-economics,line,,,,,Time,0,,,Population,,Pop[China],,line,Pop,blue,PopObs[China],,dotted,PopObs,red,,,,,

Expected result with subscript variable:

id,parent menu,graph title,menu title,kind,modes,units,x axis min,x axis max,x axis label,y axis min,y axis max,y axis soft max,y axis label,y axis format,plot 1 variable,plot 1 source,plot 1 style,plot 1 label,plot 1 color,plot 2 variable,plot 2 source,plot 2 style,plot 2 label,plot 2 color,plot 3 variable,plot 3 source,plot 3 style,plot 3 label,plot 3 color
1,Country,Pop,socio-economics,line,,,,,Time,0,,,Population,,Pop[Country],,line,Pop,blue,PopObs[Country],,dotted,PopObs,red,,,,,

[chrispcampbell]

Hi @LSarribouette, currently there is no special support in SDEverywhere to directly handle what you are describing. This is one of those cases that falls outside the set of common cases that SDEverywhere provides support for out of the box. Since there's no one-size-fits-all template, this is a case where you can customize your app (or even fork the core plugin packages) to achieve your desired functionality.

The relevant parts of the system are the @sdeverywhere/plugin-config package (which handles converting the config files into the "specs" that are read by your generated library/app code) and the template-default code. Neither of those currently is set up for the case you describe (having a "parameterized" graph spec that is aware of subscripted variables).

It sounds like you already have some code/scripts that generate the graphs.csv, so my (simplest) recommendation would be to have that code generate all the variants in your graphs.csv file (one line for each subscript variant of each graph). Then you can modify the app code to show two HTML select elements (instead of the one that you get in template-default): one that allows the user to select a graph, and the other that allows the user to select the subscript variant for that graph (i.e., the country). You will of course have to write some code to make this work (you can modify the index.js file in the generated app code), but that's the intention behind the design of the packages and templates: provide a simple way to get started, and make it relatively easy (or at least possible) to customize to your liking.

If you want to get more sophisticated, you are free to fork the plugin-config package and add some more support for your use case there. For example, you could make it automatically detect the case where you provide a variable using the subscript family (like Country) and have it automatically expand to different variants of the same graph ID (for example, 1-china, 1-india) which might simplify your app code. But this may be more work than the basic option I suggested in the previous paragraph, so it's up to you how involved you want to get.

Let me know if any of this is helpful.

[LSarribouette]

Thank you very much! Your answer is quite the one I expected. I will explore both options and see what suits us best.