Arvados

In order to give support to workbench2 development efforts, documentation should be written about how to save users preferences on the API Server.

The user object has a prefs field that may hold a serialized hash and it may be useful for global preferences, for example:

• Last page visited
• Default ordering criteria for different listings

One thing that it's important to mention is that the prefs field is a shared resource, so using it will need to take into account that other data can be there. Also, adding a mention about amount of data saved is important, as the hash isn't incrementally updatable so large data structures may produce problems when handling it.

For object specific preferences, the links might a better way to save users settings:

• Last opened tab on a project/collection/container
• Order criteria on specific projects

Links have a properties field that can hold several different data for this kind of usage.

Existing documentation pages that may be good plaaces for expansion:

https://doc.arvados.org/api/methods/links.html
https://doc.arvados.org/api/methods/users.html