Track selector state not saved between closing and reopening

[scottcain]

Describe the bug

In a nutshell: the state of collapsed versus open categories in the track selector doesn't appear to be saved during a session, so that if I close the track selector with some categories collapsed and then reopen the track selector, they are all open.

To Reproduce

This is fairly straight forward to reproduce. Take for example this testing site for WormBase: https://test.d2jjb0xowet5mr.amplifyapp.com/?session=share-HtAPAik3r7&password=heLRz
This link has the track selector open with all of the categories collapsed. Now close the track selector and then reopen it: now all of the categories are open.

Expected behavior

I think it is quite reasonable for the user to expect that the state of the track selector would be saved, so closing and reopening the track selector for a given LGV should reopen in the same state. This extends to synteny views as well: if I open a track selector for one of the assemblies in a synteny view, the track state should be the same as the track state for the LGV. I decided this isn't true--what if I have multiple LGV open for the same assembly? Anyway, the track selector for an assembly that I'm opening from a synteny view should get the initial track selector state (i.e., if the config has them all collapsed, when I open the track selector for a synteny view, those categories should be collapsed). This is perhaps a separate issue.

Version:

2.7.0

[cmdcolin]

this is related to the following sort of technical detail

LinearGenomeViewModel.activateTrackSelector calls -> session.addWidget -> which then clears away any existing state (such as collapsed state) in the track selector widget

this is actually a subtle problem and I don't know the right fix at the moment

for example, I considered making addWidget not clear away existing state, and instead look up whether an existing widget is available to use, like this (which makes it so that it only clears state if (!self.widgets.has(id)) {... )

diff --git a/packages/product-core/src/Session/DrawerWidgets.ts b/packages/product-core/src/Session/DrawerWidgets.ts
index 9c091cc04..472435400 100644
--- a/packages/product-core/src/Session/DrawerWidgets.ts
+++ b/packages/product-core/src/Session/DrawerWidgets.ts
@@ -117,13 +117,15 @@ export function DrawerWidgetSessionMixin(pluginManager: PluginManager) {
         if (!typeDefinition) {
           throw new Error(`unknown widget type ${typeName}`)
         }
-        const data = {
-          ...initialState,
-          id,
-          type: typeName,
-          configuration: conf || { type: typeName },
+        if (!self.widgets.has(id)) {
+          const data = {
+            ...initialState,
+            id,
+            type: typeName,
+            configuration: conf || { type: typeName },
+          }
+          self.widgets.set(id, data)
         }
-        self.widgets.set(id, data)
         return self.widgets.get(id)
       },

but this would cause the widget to not update at all if e.g. you were currently viewing a hg38 track selector, opened a hg19 view, and then clicked activatetrackselector in the hg19 view...the widget would just look up the current hg38 track selector state.

[cmdcolin]

after pondering this a bit, i think saving and restoring collapsed state from localstorage may be a good option