Persistent Command History

[BrianOtto]

This is in regards to the following comment in #41 ...

In terms of "most likely useful features for the near term"...one is probably being able to store the history in some browser-persistent place...and have it there between sessions so you don't have to keep going to find it. But I also want it to be Rebol-structured and queryable (including a way that you could access it and download it). So all that starts to sound like wanting some kind of generalized persistence...

We should be able to do this by replacing the array push with an insert into a IndexedDB database for the user. This is all done client side, and so there would be no need for a cookie to identify the user when they come back. In addition, a few functions in replpad.reb could be created to allow you to read, search and download this data.

I would be happy to start looking into this. I have done something similar already, to handle the JavaScript blobs in UI Builder. Please provide any additional comments or ideas you would like to try out with this feature. The database could also be expanded to include other settings, like console text and background colors, for the user.

[hostilefork]

Please provide any additional comments or ideas you would like to try out with this feature.

The only comment that comes to mind is that arbitrary Rebol data doesn't round-trip as text. It could be closer at it doing it than it is today for some basic structures. But they won't preserve binding and object identity...so doing that would require a binary format.

There was apparently one for Rebol once, and Red has made something not too complex called redbin.

I don't have immediate plans to do this...but I guess my comment would be to keep an eye out for situations where more-than-a-string would be useful, and to think about that with any generalized service design. But just getting some string persistence would--again--be a good day-to-day help so one is not hunting down test strings to retype in...