Add configurable section to results page for optional tools

[ggeisler]

This ticket is prompted by current work in Spotlight on a bulk actions feature, where we're adding a new button for Spotlight exhibit curators to perform actions on search results. Because we already have one curator action on the Spotlight search results page (Save this search) and we're adding another one (Bulk actions), there isn't room to display the buttons for these actions in the same row as the standard search result navigation and display option controls (sort, per-page, etc.) at some viewport widths without things looking pretty ugly.

At @mejackreed's suggestion, we're recommending an update to Blacklight to move optional search result actions to a new row, that could be configurable depending on whether the application needs to display it or not, above the current end-user visible result controls:

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The mockup above is for Spotlight, but I think one reason for doing this in Blacklight is so other Blacklight-based apps could follow this pattern if they had similar optional result actions to display (there might be other technical reasons I didn't catch in my discussion with @mejackreed).

• Add a new row (<div class="row"><div class="col-md-12">) directly above the current search result controls. (The “Save this search” button already wraps awkwardly at the LG breakpoint and below so a new row would fix that plus support the new button. This entire row could then be rendered only for curators, I believe.)

• Controls in this new row should be right-aligned in the row

• Controls in this new row should use similar horizontal spacing between as the search result controls in the row below

(I'm not sure the latter two to-dos above are relevant to the Blacklight part of this? And I believe @mejackreed noted that config.add_results_collection_tool is relevant here in some way.)

[jrochkind]

This may already be what @mejackreed is thinking, but my thoughts: Instead of assuming things about the structure of what goes in that row (right aligned controls with horizontal spacing -- maybe even that it is going to contain "controls" at all) -- what if the client just supplied a view_component and Blacklight just plopped it in that space, it can be whatever it wants. (Maybe it would be supplied as a class name? There could be an expected API for it if needs parameters passed in, but better if it doesn't, it's just a no-arg constructor and render it).

With Blacklight moving to view_components, there might be an opportunity to lean on that architecture. I think this could result in a more flexible "hook point", making fewer assumptions about what a client might want to put there -- and importantly, resulting in fewer lines of code and simpler code in BL itself, easier to maintain, less branches/combinations to test.

My sense is that is part of the point of BL's use of view_components, moving in this direction for more configuration points -- just supply a view component for this part of page, it can do whatever you want, instead of BL supporting specific things by declarative configuration only.

[ggeisler]

@jrochkind Thanks. Yes, I suspect your suggestion is at least generally along the lines of what @mejackreed is thinking. The parts about controls being right-aligned are specific to the current known use case we're actively working on (in Spotlight) so I left them in my description, but the relevant part for Blacklight is likely just the idea of making it easy to optionally add a space to a Blacklight-based application that has a similar need to add something there.

[cjcolvar]

FWIW We implemented bulk actions in Avalon with bookmarks. A user would bookmark items from a search and then go to their bookmarks page and perform bulk actions there. @joncameron or @mcwhitaker could give more details.

[jronallo]

Has there been any further thought on this? Or is there a solution in place for BL8? I need to add some custom export options to search results pages and just need to know the easiest way to slot a few links into the right section of the page.