Patent Application
20140244674
Data may originate from multiple sources and may be in multiple different formats. A user may interact with the data via a user interface; however, such differences in formats may result in a non-unified appearance of the data when presented to the user.
A method for normalizing data for a user interface on an on-demand basis includes receiving data in a first format, and comparing the first format to a standard format. The method further includes receiving a request to present a first subset of the data but not a second subset of the data. Responsive to receiving the request to present the first subset of the data, if the first format is different from the standard format, the method further includes transforming the first subset of the data from the first format to the standard format without transforming the second subset of the data from the first format to the standard format. The method also includes presenting the first subset of the data with the standard format.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.
Maintaining a consistent appearance of a user interface may provide a positive and efficient environment for user interaction with data on a computing device. However, data may originate from various sources, may be formatted differently, and/or may include incomplete elements. Further, attempts to reformat the data may be cumbersome and costly with respect to time and/or usage of resources such as processors, storage devices, communication media, etc. For example, some approaches to normalizing data involve using a Model, View, View Model pattern in which each source data has its own view model. Such patterns do not identify a shape of a standard format and are difficult to maintain and update for new data sources and formats.
Thus, embodiments are disclosed for normalizing data for a user interface and data displayed therein by transforming and/or augmenting data on an as-requested basis. The just-in-time, on-demand environment of such normalization ensures that computing resources and time are only spent on processing data that is particularly requested for display in the user interface. Further, the data is transformed and/or augmented based on a declarative augmentation definition. The augmentation definition provides a highly customizable normalization layer for declaring a shape of a standard format and addressing differences between multiple data sources. Accordingly, data from multiple sources that has multiple formats may be processed efficiently and presented in a unified manner such that all data looks the same to a user and computing resources are conserved.
The computing device 102 may be in communication with an internal storage machine 110 and an external storage machine 112. For example, the internal storage machine 110 may be integrated or otherwise included within the computing device 102, while the external storage machine 112 may be local to the computing device but housed outside of the computing device. The computing device 102 may communicate with the external storage machine 112 via any suitable wired or wireless connection, including but not limited to Ethernet, FireWire, USB, SATA, WiFi, WiFi direct, Bluetooth, etc. The computing device 102 may also communicate with one or more remote services, such as a remote service 114, via a network 116. The remote service 114 may be any suitable remotely-located service and/or storage system. For example, the remote service 114 may be a media server corresponding to an online and/or cloud-based media store and/or entertainment application. Data may be stored at the remote service 114 and/or may be stored in one or more databases 118 associated with the remote service 114.
The computing device may receive data from one or more of the internal storage machine 110, the external storage machine 112, and the remote service 114 to populate the user interface 106. However, the data from any or all of the above-identified sources may be in a different format from one another and/or from a standard format utilized by the user interface 106. For example, the user interface 106 may display media items from a local database, such as a personal library of media items, from a remote service, such as an online store, and/or from a combination of a personal library and one or more online stores. Therefore, the data may be processed in a normalization layer by the computing device 102 when the data is requested for presentation in order to display the data in the same standard format within the user interface. Accordingly, a user may experience a seamless transition between viewing items in a personal library, from one or more online stores, and/or from a combination of a personal library and one or more online stores, as the content may be displayed in the same standard format across these environments.
Accordingly, the augmentation definition may map properties of a standard format to properties of one or more non-standard formats. For example, a property having the same property identifier in both the standard format and a non-standard format may have different value types. The associated value for the property may be in array in the non-standard format and may be one or more pages in the standard format. Therefore, when mapping the property identifier of the non-standard format to the corresponding identifier in the standard format, the two formats may be compared in order to determine whether the non-standard format is different from the standard format. Likewise, the augmentation definition may be utilized to determine whether a particular property is in a different format than the corresponding property in the standard format.
Continuing with
In embodiments where the data includes one or more objects, each of the one or more objects may have one or more associated properties. Additionally, each of the one or more associated properties may have a corresponding and/or associated property identifier and a corresponding and/or associated value. Thus, a subset of the data may correspond to a particular property or group of properties of the data and/or a particular object of the data. In some embodiments, the data may include one or more media items, and each property may correspond to a portion of metadata associated with the one or more media items.
Turning briefly to
Turning back to
The method 200 of
Responsive to the request, the method 200 includes determining if the first format is different from the standard format, as indicated at 210. In some embodiments, this determination may be performed based on the comparison described at 206 and/or based on the augmentation definition. If the first format and/or the format of the subset of data is different from the standard format, the method 200 continues to 212, to transform the first subset of the data from the first format to the standard format. Other subsets of the data need not be transformed when the first subset of the data is transformed, regardless of a format associated with the first and/or other subsets of data, when the other subsets of data are not requested. The method 200 then presents the first subset of the data in the standard format, as indicated at 214, thereby presenting the transformed subset of data. However, if the first format and/or the format of the subset of data is the same as the standard format, the method 200 skips 212 and presents the first subset of the data in the standard format, as indicated at 214, without transforming the subset of data.
Turning back to
In contrast, subset 2 illustrates a subset that includes only properties that are different from the standard format. As schematically shown in the augmentation definition 308, the squares and triangles representing property identifiers, values, and/or value types of a non-standard format may be mapped to circles representing property identifiers, values, and/or value types of a standard format. Accordingly, responsive to a request to present subset 2, the format is transformed to the standard format, and subset 2′, representing the transformed subset in the standard format, is presented at the user interface 310.
Subset 3 illustrates a subset that includes properties that are different from the standard format and a property that is the same as the standard format. Responsive to a request to present subset 3, the properties that are different from the standard format are transformed, while the property that is the same as the standard format is maintained. Therefore, subset 3′, which includes a transformed first and second property and an untransformed third property, is presented at the user interface 310.
The method 400 includes determining if a property of the data has a different name than a corresponding property in the standard format, as indicated at 402. In other words, a property of metadata associated with a media item may have a first property name that is similar to but different from a standard property name that is mapped to the first property name in an augmentation definition. If the property of the data has a different name than the corresponding property in the standard format, the method 400 includes performing an aliasing operation by changing a property identifier and/or name of the associated property without changing the value of the property associated with the changed property identifier.
For example, an original property identifier of “genre” in a first format may be mapped to a standard property identifier of “genreID” in the standard format in the augmentation definition. Responsive to determining this difference, the original property identifier of “genre” may be changed to “genreID” in order to normalize the data with the standard format. In some embodiments, the data may be transformed by augmenting the data with a new object that defines the standard property identifier as having a value associated with the original property identifier.
The method 400 further includes determining if a property of the data has a different value type than a corresponding property in the standard format to which the property of the data is mapped in an augmentation definition, as indicated at 406. If the value type is different, the method 400 continues to 408, which includes parsing the property to negotiate and/or identify information for converting the property to the standard format. Based on the parsing, a new value is created for the property and 410 and the property is set to this new value at 412.
For example, a first format and a standard format may have a property with the same identifier; however the first format may include a string value for the property, while the standard format may include an integer value for the property. Therefore, the property value of the first format may be converted from a string to an integer to comply with the standard format.
At 414, the method 400 includes determining if a property of the data and/or a value for a property of the data is missing. For example, the data may be missing a property of the standard format that is mapped by the augmentation definition. If a property of the data is determined to be missing, the method 400 includes augmenting the data by adding new objects and/or new properties to one or more objects, as indicated at 416. In some embodiments, such augmentation may include augmenting the data with a default value for the property, as indicated at 418. For example, as shown in
The method 400 further includes determining if a property of the data is included in an object of the standard format, as indicated at 420. The determination of 420 may further include determining if the property of the data is an array and a corresponding property in the standard format is one or more pages, as indicated at 422. If the property of the data is included in an object of the standard format, the method 400 includes augmenting the data by adding new objects and/or properties to one or more objects, as indicated at 424. The augmentation may include transforming the array to a virtual list, as indicated at 426. Further, once an object is augmented, it may be deflated to an original state, such that any and/or all added properties are removed.
As discussed above, the data may correspond to one or more media items and/or metadata corresponding thereto. For example, a user may have media items stored on a local storage machine, and a remote service may provide media items for purchase and/or consumption. The user may view, purchase, and/or otherwise interact with media items originating from these and any other suitable sources within the same user interface. However, one of the sources may provide media items having different formats from one or more of the other sources. Further, media items within a single source may have different formats from one another. Any or all of these different formats may also be different from a standard format utilized in a user interface for interacting with the differently-sourced media items. If left unaddressed, the user interface may not have a unified appearance and/or may not display all of the information associated with each of the media items.
User interface 508 illustrates an appearance of a normalized user interface, after the data is transformed in accordance with the augmentation definition 504. As shown, a plurality of visual representations 510 of metadata are presented with a unified appearance for ease of viewing and interaction. For example, the album art is resized to match one another, the missing genre field is populated with a default value, and the track lengths are standardized to the same format.
In the example of
As shown in
As shown at 708 and 710, these interfaces 706 pull data from the non-standard data store if no conversion is needed, such as when interfacing aliased or original properties. As shown at 712, these interfaces 706 may also pull data from the cache if a conversion was already executed for the standard data, such as when interfacing converted properties. Finally, if a conversion is needed but has not been executed for the standard data, these interfaces 706 execute a conversion, as shown at 714, and store the result in the standard data cache, as shown in 716. The conversion interface may access the original data to perform the conversion, as indicated at 718.
Similarly to the original JSON object 802, the augmented JSON object 804 includes a plurality of properties 810. However, some of the properties 810 are transformed versions of the original properties 806. For example, as shown at 812, the length property is converted from the value “PT4M11S” to the value “Sun Dec 00:04:11 PST 1899” based on the augmentation definition 808. As shown at 814, the genreID property is aliased, since the original JSON object 802 includes a genre property with a different property identifier. Therefore, the genreID of the augmented JSON object 804 has a value defined by the genre of the original JSON object 802. As shown at 816, some properties may be augmented by paging. The rights property of the original JSON object 802 is an array of values; however the standard format may present the same property as a collection of pages. In the augmented JSON object 804, therefore, a virtual list is provided, where each entry in the list is a right.
In accordance with the present disclosure, a subset of data received at a computing device may be transformed to correspond to a standard format on an as-needed basis. By only transforming data when the data is requested to be presented a user interface may maintain a unified appearance, yet processing overhead may be decreased in comparison with configurations that transform data without regard to such a request.
In some embodiments, the methods and processes described herein may be tied to a computing system of one or more computing devices. In particular, such methods and processes may be implemented as a computer-application program or service, an application-programming interface (API), a library, and/or other computer-program product.
Computing system 900 includes a logic machine 902 and a storage machine 904. Computing system 900 may optionally include a display subsystem 906, input subsystem 908, communication subsystem 910, and/or other components not shown in
Logic machine 902 includes one or more physical devices configured to execute instructions. For example, the logic machine may be configured to execute instructions that are part of one or more applications, services, programs, routines, libraries, objects, components, data structures, or other logical constructs. Such instructions may be implemented to perform a task, implement a data type, transform the state of one or more components, achieve a technical effect, or otherwise arrive at a desired result.
The logic machine may include one or more processors configured to execute software instructions. Additionally or alternatively, the logic machine may include one or more hardware or firmware logic machines configured to execute hardware or firmware instructions. Processors of the logic machine may be single-core or multi-core, and the instructions executed thereon may be configured for sequential, parallel, and/or distributed processing. Individual components of the logic machine optionally may be distributed among two or more separate devices, which may be remotely located and/or configured for coordinated processing. Aspects of the logic machine may be virtualized and executed by remotely accessible, networked computing devices configured in a cloud-computing configuration.
Storage machine 904 includes one or more physical devices configured to hold and/or store machine-readable instructions executable by the logic machine to implement the methods and processes described herein. For example, logic machine 902 may be in operative communication with storage machine 904. When such methods and processes are implemented, the state of storage machine 904 may be transformed—e.g., to hold different data. Storage machine 904 may correspond to local storage machine 110 of
Storage machine 904 may include removable and/or built-in devices. Storage machine 904 may include optical memory (e.g., CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray Disc, etc.), semiconductor memory (e.g., RAM, EPROM, EEPROM, etc.), and/or magnetic memory (e.g., hard-disk drive, floppy-disk drive, tape drive, MRAM, etc.), among others. Storage machine 904 may include machine-readable volatile, nonvolatile, dynamic, static, read/write, read-only, random-access, sequential-access, location-addressable, file-addressable, and/or content-addressable devices.
It will be appreciated that storage machine 904 includes one or more physical devices. However, aspects of the instructions described herein alternatively may be propagated by a communication medium (e.g., an electromagnetic signal, an optical signal, etc.) that is not held by a physical device for a finite duration.
Aspects of logic machine 902 and storage machine 904 may be integrated together into one or more hardware-logic components. Such hardware-logic components may include field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), program- and application-specific integrated circuits (PASIC/ASICs), program- and application-specific standard products (PSSP/ASSPs), system-on-a-chip (SOC), and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), for example.
When included, display subsystem 906 may be used to present a visual representation of data held by storage machine 904. This visual representation may take the form of a graphical user interface (GUI), such as user interfaces 310, 508, 608, etc. As the herein described methods and processes change the data held by the storage machine, and thus transform the state of the storage machine, the state of display subsystem 906 may likewise be transformed to visually represent changes in the underlying data. Display subsystem 906 may include one or more display devices utilizing virtually any type of technology. Such display devices may be combined with logic machine 902 and/or storage machine 904 in a shared enclosure, or such display devices may be peripheral display devices. For example, display subsystem 906 may include display device 104 of
When included, input subsystem 908 may comprise or interface with one or more user-input devices such as a keyboard, mouse, touch screen, microphone, or game controller. For example, input subsystem may include or interface with computing device 102 of
When included, communication subsystem 910 may be configured to communicatively couple computing system 900 with one or more other computing devices. Communication subsystem 910 may include wired and/or wireless communication devices compatible with one or more different communication protocols. As non-limiting examples, the communication subsystem may be configured for communication via a wireless telephone network, or a wired or wireless local- or wide-area network. In some embodiments, the communication subsystem may allow computing system 900 to send and/or receive messages to and/or from other devices via a network such as the Internet.
It will be understood that the configurations and/or approaches described herein are exemplary in nature, and that these specific embodiments or examples are not to be considered in a limiting sense, because numerous variations are possible. The specific routines or methods described herein may represent one or more of any number of processing strategies. As such, various acts illustrated and/or described may be performed in the sequence illustrated and/or described, in other sequences, in parallel, or omitted. Likewise, the order of the above-described processes may be changed.
The subject matter of the present disclosure includes all novel and non-obvious combinations and sub-combinations of the various processes, systems and configurations, and other features, functions, acts, and/or properties disclosed herein, as well as any and all equivalents thereof.
