electronics-inventory/future-plans.md

Future Plans

App architecture

parse_url mutates too many module-level variables

parse_url() directly assigns to a large number of module-level state variables (section, grid_view_state, grid_tab, current_grid_id, grid_draft, current_panel_idx, grid_source_id, highlight_cell, selected_component_id). This is fragile and hard to reason about.

Preferred direction: represent the full UI state as a single immutable state object, and have parse_url() return a new state value rather than mutating globals:

function parse_url(path) {
    return { section, grid_view_state, current_grid_id, ... };
}
state = parse_url(location.pathname); render(state);

render() if/else chain

The render dispatcher is a long chain of bare else if branches. Replace with a lookup table:

const SECTION_RENDERERS = {
    components: render_components,
    inventory:  render_inventory,
    fields:     render_fields,
    grids:      render_grids,
    templates:  render_templates,
};
function render() { sync_nav(); SECTION_RENDERERS[section]?.(); }

app.mjs monolith

app.mjs is large. Consider splitting into per-section modules (views/components.mjs, views/grids.mjs, etc.) that each export their render function and own their local state.

Field system

Field rendering integrations

render_field_value() in app.mjs is the central place for field display logic. Planned extensions:

• Mouser/Digi-Key part number fields → auto-craft links to product pages
• More URL-like patterns (without https:// prefix)

Field types

Currently all field values are free-text strings. Could benefit from typed fields (numeric, enum/dropdown) for better formatting and validation.

PDF / files

PDF page count and multi-page navigation

Currently only the first page thumbnail is shown. Could show page count and allow browsing pages in the lightbox.

Inventory

Inventory URL reflects selected entry

Similar to how components now reflect /components/:id in the URL, inventory entries have no URL state — refreshing loses context.

Grids

Grid URL state

Navigating into a grid viewer updates the URL correctly, but the grid list and draft state have no URL representation.