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Stirling-PDF/frontend/editor
ConnorYoh 2cf355c5cd feat(editor): move admin settings onto TanStack Query (#7437)
# Description of Changes

## The problem

`useAdminSettings` backs all 18 admin config sections. Each section
fetched its own copy of its settings block, held it in hand-rolled
loading/saving state, and refetched manually after every save.

Three consequences:

- **Duplicate fetching.** Four AI tabs all read the `aiEngine` block.
Nothing was shared, so each open refetched it.
- **Duplicated wiring.** All 18 sections carried the same effect to
trigger the fetch, each one depending on a `fetchSettings` callback that
would have refetched on every render had it ever become unstable.
- **Console noise.** The hook made 11 `console.*` calls, four of them
`JSON.stringify(settings, null, 2)` on **every fetch and every save** —
admin configuration serialised into the console of every admin session.

Every save also ended with a hand-written `await fetchSettings()`.
Forget it in a new section and its pending badges silently go stale.

## The fix

The hook uses TanStack Query, keyed on `sectionName`, so sections
reading the same block share one fetch and one cache entry.

The fetch gate moved into the hook. Sections used to write:

```ts
const { settings, fetchSettings } = useAdminSettings({ sectionName: "legal" });

useEffect(() => {
  if (loginEnabled) fetchSettings();
}, [loginEnabled, fetchSettings]);
```

and now write:

```ts
const { settings } = useAdminSettings({
  sectionName: "legal",
  enabled: loginEnabled,
});
```

Saving is a mutation that invalidates the section on success, so the
refetch is structural rather than something each section remembers.

The delta computation and the save transformer are unchanged — that is
domain logic, not fetching. `settings` is still an editable draft seeded
from the server response, so forms behave exactly as before.

## Why it is better

Measured against the previous implementation across identical scenarios.
`commits` counts committed renders.

| Scenario | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Open one section | 2 commits, 1 request | 2 commits, 1 request |
| Browse the four AI tabs | 8 commits, 4 requests | **5 commits, 1
request** |
| Edit and save | 4 commits, 2 requests | 4 commits, 2 requests |

Committed renders are equal or better everywhere; browsing the AI tabs
costs a quarter of the requests.

The diff reads +449 / −303, but that includes a test file for a hook
that had no tests:

| | Added | Removed | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production code (21 files) | 154 | 303 | **−149** |
| Tests (1 file) | 295 | 0 | +295 |

The 18 section files account for −133 of that: each drops an effect, a
destructure and usually an import, and gains one `enabled:` line. The
hook itself goes from 234 to 180 lines. `console.*` calls go from 11 to
0.

## Caching

Settings inherit the client's 30s stale window rather than refetching on
every mount, which is where the request saving comes from.

Nothing inside a cached block is server-observed — the only live reads
in these sections, `/api/v1/ai/health` and the tessdata language list,
are separate calls outside this query. A block therefore only changes
when another admin writes it.

Two things bound the staleness:

- Sections already held a single snapshot for as long as the modal
stayed open, with no refetch on focus. 30s is shorter than that window,
not longer.
- `computeDelta` only emits fields whose draft differs from the baseline
it was seeded from, so a stale baseline cannot produce a collateral
write. The only race is two admins editing the same field, which is
unchanged. Saving invalidates, so acting refreshes to current values.

The blocks where a stale read would matter most — `security`, `premium`,
`database` — are set once at deployment and effectively never edited
concurrently. The block with the most cache reuse, `aiEngine`, is the
least consequential.

**Convention:** config blocks cache; observed state does not. A section
that displays live server state inside its settings block should
override `staleTime` locally.

## Testing

14 tests, covering the shared fetch, cache reuse across tab reopens, key
separation between blocks, the `enabled` gate, delta-only saves, the
empty-delta short circuit, post-save invalidation, pending-value
display, and draft reseeding.

Each was checked by breaking the implementation and confirming the suite
fails: per-consumer query keys, sending the whole draft instead of the
delta, dropping the post-save invalidate, reporting loaded while
disabled, skipping the empty-delta short circuit, and reverting the
stale window to zero.

`task frontend:check` green. Two unrelated tests fail on this branch —
`workbenchSession.test.ts` and `notificationActions.test.tsx` — and fail
identically on `main`.

## Follow-ups

The sections that fetch through services rather than this hook — Teams,
TeamDetails, People, roughly 2,600 lines — are unchanged. Between them
they share two reads (`getTeams` and `getUsers`, both used by all three)
and carry ten distinct write operations, with no test coverage today.

---

## Primer: mutations

`useQuery` is for reads. It caches, dedupes, and re-renders when data
arrives. `useMutation` is for writes, where none of that applies — a
write happens once, when the user asks.

```ts
const save = useMutation({
  mutationFn: (body) => putAdminSection("legal", body),
  onSuccess: () => queryClient.invalidateQueries({ queryKey }),
});

save.mutate(body);            // fire and forget
await save.mutateAsync(body); // or await it
save.isPending;               // disable the button
save.error;                   // show the failure
```

`isPending` and `error` replace the `useState` flag and
`try/catch/finally` you would otherwise write around every save.

After a write the cache holds stale data. Two ways to fix it:

| | What it does | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| `invalidateQueries` | Marks the data stale so it refetches | The
server may transform, queue or reject part of what you sent |
| `setQueryData` | Writes your value into the cache, no request | The
response tells you exactly what the server now holds |

**Invalidate by default. Use `setQueryData` only when the response is
authoritative.**

This hook has to invalidate: the server can queue a settings change
rather than applying it, returning it in a `_pending` block that the
form renders as a badge. Writing the local draft into the cache would
show a queued change as applied.

Most mutations are not like that. A "rename a team" write, where the
response is the new team, is a `setQueryData` case.

One gotcha: `mutate` does not throw, `mutateAsync` does. An awaited
`mutateAsync` without a `try/catch` is an unhandled rejection.
2026-09-01 21:58:50 +00:00
..
2026-08-24 20:45:54 +00:00