Array slides – make test for barcode uniqueness

[Nicklas Nordborg]

As mentioned in the BASE core specifications enforcing array slide barcodes to be unique would cause problems with deleting/undeleting. Therefore it's the users' responsibility to keep barcodes unique.

However, managing a production installation in a setting where numerous array slides are tracked in BASE requires barcodes to be unique.

Therefore, if it still would pose a problem to enforce barcode uniqueness of array slides, a test for the same would be useful to avoid ending up in a situation where duplicated barcodes exist in the same system.

That is, when creating an array slide, either by adding one slide or by using the Multiple slides wizard (or if implemented by using an import plugin), a test is executed that verifies the uniqueness of entered barcodes. If entered barcodes already exists, the user is notified about this and allowed to abort the creation of new slides. The test would have to have complete read access to all slides in the system irrespectively of owner in order to perform verification.

Fancy variants where the duplicated barcode is highlighted or in some other way reported to the user can of course be added. If an import plugin is used, test for barcode uniqueness and alternative actions in response to existing duplicated could be handled by the plugin.

[Nicklas Nordborg]

This is how it can be implemented. Due to backwards compatibility this can't go very deep into the core.

• Add ArraySlide.exists(String barcode) as a static method. This will check if a slide with the barcode already exists in the database. Access permissions are ignored.
• If a barcode is specified for a slide the web client calls the ArraySlids.exists() method to check if the barcode already exists. The method should only be called for new slides or if the barcode has changed.
• The check should not be made if no barcode is given.
• The multiple slide creation wizard must also check that none of the slides it is creating have duplicate barcodes.
• Since the check is a responsibility for the client code the core can never guarantee uniqueness, since some clients/plug-ins may not do the check.

[Nicklas Nordborg]

(In [4220]) Fixes #955: Array slides ?\226?\128?\147 make test for barcode uniqueness