Favorites Service

Description

The Favorites service provides a way to add favorites feature to your content. It includes a service for managing the list of favorites and a set of components for displaying and interacting with the list.

• The favorites are isolated per user, per space.
• The service provides an API for adding, removing, and listing favorites.
• The service provides a set of react-query hooks for interacting with the favorites list
• The components include a button for toggling the favorite state of an object
• The service relies on ambiguous object ids to identify the objects being favorite. This allows the service to be used with any type of content, not just saved objects.

API

// client side
import {
  FavoritesClient,
  FavoritesContextProvider,
  useFavorites,
  FavoriteButton,
} from '@kbn/content-management-favorites-public';

const appName = 'my-app';
const favoriteObjectType = 'dashboard';
const favoritesClient = new FavoritesClient(appName, favoriteObjectType, {
  http: core.http,
  usageCollection: plugins.usageCollection,
});

// wrap your content with the favorites context provider
const myApp = () => {
  <FavoritesContextProvider favoritesClient={favoritesClient}>
    <App />
  </FavoritesContextProvider>;
};

const App = () => {
  // get the favorites list
  const favoritesQuery = useFavorites();

  // display favorite state and toggle button for an object
  return <FavoriteButton id={'some-object-id'} />;
};

Implementation Details

Internally the favorites list is backed by a saved object. A saved object of type "favorites" is created for each user (user profile id) and space (space id) and object type (e.g. dashboard) combination when a user for the first time favorites an object. The saved object contains a list of favorite objects of the type.

{
  "_index": ".kibana_8.16.0_001",
  "_id": "spaceid:favorites:object_type:u_profile_id",
  "_source": {
    "favorites": {
      "userId": "u_profile_id",
      "type: "dashboard",
      "favoriteIds": [
        "dashboard_id_1",
        "dashboard_id_2",
      ]
    },
    "type": "favorites",
    "references": [],
    "namespace": "spaceid",
  }
},

The service doesn't track the favorite object itself, only the object id. When the object is deleted, the favorite isn't removed from the list automatically.