Exporting dive sites as XML

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Sat, Apr 06, 2019 at 12:52:59PM -0700, Doug Junkins wrote:
> I’ve been thinking about the code to export dive sites to an XML file and wanted to get feedback on the three approaches I see as options:
> 
> 1) Add a radio button to the Export dialog that selects “Subsurface dive sites XML”. The “Selected dives” or “All dives” selection would work to export either all of the dive sites in the table or just those associated with the selected dives. The upside of this is that it is very simple to implement (to be honest, I’ve already done it, but I’m not convinced it is the right long term answer.) The downside is that there is no way to export dive sites that are not yet associated with a dive unless you dump all dive sites.

I think this is a logical extension of what we have - but it continues to
treat dive sites as second class entities.

> 2) The second option is to add an “Export dive site” button to the “Dive site management” form that Berthold added for the dive site and undo branch. This would allow the export of the individual dive sites, whether or not there is a dive associated with them yet. An “Export all dive sites” button could also be added to the Dive sites tab next to the existing “Purge unused dive sites” button.
> 
> 3) The third option is to add a selection box to the table on the Dive sites tab that allows you to select a set of dive sites that you want to export and then a button that exports the selected dive sites. A toggle button to toggle all sites on or off could be included as well. This offers the most flexibility to select exactly which sites you want in the XML file and avoids having a lot of individual files if you’re exporting several sites.

I think a combination of 2) and 3) is what we really want. If dive sites
are first class citizens, then we need to be able to select one, some, or
all of them in the dive site list and then export those.

> I’m leaning towards the last option. It is probably also the most challenging for me to code given my limited Qt experience, but I’m willing to take a stab at it.

Frankly, I'd start with 1) simply because it's consistent with what we
have and in a pinch it gives most users what they need. If you export all
dive sites then it's fairly easy to import the ones that you want into a
different dive log.

Once that works, I'd tackle the additions to the UI to be able to select
which dive sites to export. I'm happy to help with the Qt side of that
(and I'm sure that Berthold would say the same).

/D