Welcome to Weaver! This page is intended for new users, or users who are looking for some quick reminders. Here we will explain some of the basic functionality of Weaver and how to get started on your first space. We will start with the basics, feel free to skip ahead to a topic of your interest by looking at the headers listed below!  If any questions remain please feel free to contact us at [email protected] and we'll get to back to you as soon as possible!


Planning:

  1. Getting started
    1. Login
    2. Anatomy of Weaver 
    3. First space
    4. Access Control List (ACL) access
  2. First data
    1. What does data look like
    2. Creating nodes manually
    3. Importing data from files
    4. Setting up services (
    5. Creating views
    6. Exporting data
  3. Advanced features (might be separate guides)
    1. Space settings
    2. Types
    3. Setting up Forms
    4. Setting up branches
    5. Using transform function ins the left panel


Getting Started

First time login

There are two different ways to get started with Weaver. If you are part of an existing environment, you will be asked to sign in with the username and password that has been provided by either the admin for that environment or from the Weaver team.

If the environment you are visiting has public spaces (more on this later) you will see a space instead of the login page. To log in from here, you can either visit 

https://<name>.wvr.io/login

or click on the Log in button located on the bottom left of the screen.


The other option is when the environment you are visiting has the sign up feature enabled, in this case the login page will have an additional line below the log in button that allows a user to sign up to the environment. Pressing this will ask for some information and after filling out the required information you will be logged in.



The anatomy of Weaver

Weaver can be divided into 3 pieces, the taskbar on the far left, the left panel (in the middle) and the graph panel (far right). 

The taskbar contains buttons to different menus. The amount of buttons will differ on the permissions the user has, but once logged in there will always be an explore button (that will take you home) and a space settings button (where you can adjust setting for basic functionality, appearance and advanced functionalities, more on these later).

The left panel contains lists of different elements present on the space, usually when visiting a new space, all these lists will be empty as there is no data present and no views, services or forms have been added to the space. The exception to this rule would be if sign up is enabled and if there is a template space present in the environment, in this the first space you will visit will be a copy of a space someone has made with some data already present and possibly some views/services as well.

The final part is the graph panel, here a visual representation of the data can be shown and individual elements can be selected or edited. The graph panel also contains some filter menus and the graph console if it is enabled.



Your first space

Environments can contain one or more spaces, each space contains it's own set of data, services, forms and views (more on these later), and rights to a space can differ between these (i.e. you can have write access on one space, but only have read access on another space)

The space you are currently on will be displayed at the top of the left panel, this is also the place where you switch between spaces (if you have access to multiple spaces.) How you can add spaces and change permissions for these will be explained in the ACL section of this guide.

It could be that you are starting out in a space that has already been filled with data, but for the next step we will assume that the space you are using is fresh and empty, in the next section we will discuss how to change that!


Your first data


What does data look like?

Before explaining how to create or import your first data set, let us take a short time explaining how data is represented in Weaver and what you can expect to encounter. Here we will also introduce you to some of the terms we will continue on using in the remainder of this guide.

The first, and most important, element we will talk about are nodes. Nodes represent a single data point. These nodes will always be created with a unique identifier, this identifier can be used to search for data points within a space using either a query (more on these later in it's own section) or by using the  global search button located in the left panel. 


The image above show the most simple node possible, the identifier is the long string of letters and numbers seen in the left panel. To find this identifier simply click on a node and then click on the downwards arrow just below the node name in the left panel (in the image above the menu has been expanded already so the arrow has changed its orientation.

You will notice in the image above that the node is represented as [ blank ], this is because we have not given it a name attribute. Attributes are additional information that can be attached to a node and can come in many types of data like numbers, links, dates, boolean etc. Attributes consist of a key and a value, a node can have multiple attributes attached to it, but the key has to be unique for each of them. Multiple nodes can use attributes with the same key and in fact, this is a useful way to order or compare nodes! In the default settings of Weaver, the attribute with the key 'name' has a special role, this attribute will be displayed in the graph panel below the node. In the section about Space settings we will explain how different attributes can be used for this purpose.


In the image above you can see that we made a node with multiple attributes, and that the attribute with the name key is being used to display in the graph panel.

You will also notice a new element, between the two nodes we created, there is also a relation. Relations are links between two nodes and also have a key, in the image above we used the key 'type'. 

 Relations can be used to indicate a connection between two points of data, the key can be used to indicate what sort of relation it is (like contains, isPartOf, subsetOf). The type relation has a special role in Weaver, and it is the reason why the nodes in the image are now coloured, we will explain this in more detail in the section about types.  

Creating nodes manually

Now we will introduce some of the ways you can add data to a space. The first way is to right click anywhere in the graph panel and click 'Create node' in the context menu that pops up. In this menu, you can make either a single node or multiple nodes at once, you can also add a relation to or from an existing node. You also have the option to add a custom identifier or leave this open in which case an automatically generated one will be used. In the create node form, you can also add attributes to the node, by default it will show the option for a 'name' attribute, but as many as desired can be added. Once a node has been created, all these options can be revisited by editing the node. To do this simply right click on a node in the graph view and select 'Edit <node>' from the context menu. In this case, <node> will either display the name attribute (if present), or the identifier of the node.


Before moving on, now would be a good time to introduce a view to the space. This way you can always see what data is present on a space. For now, let's make a simple view to show all data, but later on we will see that it is possible to make more complex views (i.e. only show nodes where the name contains 'important' somewhere in the attribute). To add a view, you can either open the 'View' submenu in the taskbar under Space settings, or expand the Views list in the left panel. If no view is present, there will be a line with 'Create a new View'. If a view is already present, you can see a plus sign next to the View header, pressing this will also take you to the view menu. When pressed, you will be asked if you want to create a graph view or a spreadsheet view. A spreadsheet view will display a table with rows and columns in which each row is a node and each column is either an attribute or a relation. The graph view will show a visual overview of the data. For now we'll use the graph view, once pressed you can give the view a name, use preselected views (All or Types) or use a query to determine which nodes will be displayed. For now, press the default query 'All' and save the view.


One of the other ways to add data is to use an import service. On the page 'how to add a service' we explain how you can set up a service to a space. For each type of file a new service will be required (i.e. a service used to import a ttl file can't import a xml file). Once service has been set up it can be used at any time by expanding the service menu in the left panel.


Another way is to make use of the pipelines function, this menu contains all the import and export functions available on Weaver. For more information on this functionality, see our introduction to pipelines guide.


Access Control List (ACL) access and permissions

To make full use of the possibilities of Weaver, write access to a space is needed. With read only access a lot of functions described on this page will not be visible or useable. When you use the sign up function, you will end up in a space where you will automatically have write access. However, if you just log in and are missing these permissions, an account with admin rights will be needed to provide you with the proper permissions. These permissions include, being able to see certain spaces on the environment (domain access) and being able to edit spaces on the environment (write access).

Other permissions that can be granted to a user via the ACL are the permissions to create spaces, create users, manage domains (see this page for more details) and managing user groups and ACL permissions (see this page for more details).


Advanced features

Taking things a bit further, there are other and a bit more complex way to change and add data. This can be done by using forms, making use of version control or by using the built in transformation service (there is also a transformation service that can be used by uploading files that perform transformations, there is a different guide on the support page that show these)


The built in transformation service allows you to transform data that is already present on the space and will change attributes on a node into a new node with a relation to the originating node. The guide above shows an example of this and will explain where to find this function and what the different fields in this function signify.

Forms are a quick way to add additional data to the existing data, or to edit existing nodes via a node. Forms have a lot of different possibilities and making full use of them will require some knowledge of the other functions as well, this includes using weaver query, help on using weaver query can be found in the graph console.

For version control there is no guide yet, however, this uses different branches that can be either clones of the main branch or be created as parentless branches. Data on these branches can be changed, deleted or added and afterwards, branches can be merged and the latest version of the data will be applied. 


Types, type view and you:

As said before, the type relation has a special function in Weaver. It turns a node from being just a node, to a node that can either be a type-node (when it has an incoming type relation) or an instance of that type (when it has an outgoing type relation).

Types are useful because they give access to an overview of your data in a structured way via the type view, located at the top of the left panel. In this overview only the type nodes are represented, however, the size of the node will give an indication of how many instances these types have. Additionally, relations are shown in this overview. These relations can indicate either relations directly between two type nodes, or relations between instances of their respective type. 


Space Settings:

The menu labelled 'Space Settings' can be found on the taskbar as the cog symbol an contains 4 submenus.  Three of these, services, views and forms, can also be found in the left panel and will not be discussed here. The top submenu however, labelled as data, contains various settings for both spaces and users.


We will first discuss the user options, which has 3 headers in the data menu: User mode, Developer mode and Theme. These settings are saved in the local storage of your browser, meaning that if you use a different device or browser, these settings will have to be set to your personal preference for each browser.


User mode controls how much of the different data options in the left panel a user will see and contains 3 options: simple, advanced and expert. Expert will show you all of the following items in the left panel: Types, Relations, Attributes and Views. Advanced will only show you Types and Views and Simple will only show Views. 

Switching between these modes can be done by any user and doesn't require admin rights and will apply to all spaces on an environment.


Developer mode has three boxes that can be checked and control wether certain elements are visible or not. These elements are the developer console, the config data for a space and the changelog. By default the developer console will be visible and the config data and changelog will be hidden. We will explain more about the developer console in the views section of this guide, but for now we will say that it is located in the bottom right of the graph panel and it can be used to write and perform queries on the data in the space.

The config data is hidden by default, but when selected to be displayed is located on its own branch for each space. This branch is called the '$config' branch and contains the data that is used to store things like services, views and space settings. Once this setting is enabled, a user can switch to the config branch in the same way you would switch to any branch by clicking on the current branch in the bottom of the left panel and selecting it from the list. Changing data on the config branch is generally not recommended as it can remove features or prevent them from working properly.

The Hide changelog is turned on by default, unchecking this box will allow a user to look at the changelog by clicking on the Weaver logo at the top of the taskbar. The changelog will show you release notes for certain components.


Finally there is the Theme header. Here you can switch from the default light mode to dark mode. 

 

- user settings

- space settings


Views:

- prefixed views

- using weaver query to make your own


TODO:

Create/finish version control guide

Add images to this page

Add saved stuff from home computer

Add a template space to app.wvr.io with some data and views

Add a section on space settings: data (also explain how to remove the open view by default)

Add a section about clearing spaces (manual and via ACL access)

Something about queries

Maybe some exercise style examples with queries/creating forms

Remove this section