[Discuss] SavedObjects.incrementCounter in the UI?

[afharo]

Would it make sense to add the incrementCounter API to the public contract?

It could help plugins needing to maintain a counter in the UI (i.e.: for telemetry purposes), instead of creating an HTTP API and run the method on the server end.

What do you think?

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-core (Team:Core)

[pgayvallet]

FWIW, even on the server-side, incrementCounter is not exposed on SavedObjectsClient, and is only available when directly working with a SavedObjectsRepository. Exposing this API on the client-side client means exposing it on its server-side counterpart too (not that this is necessarily an issue).

I'm not really sure what was the idea behind the decision of not exposing this API on the server-side client in the first place, but I feel like incrementCounter was more or less considered as a private/protected API? Does anyone have more context on that?

Also @afharo what specific usages of this API from the client-side do you foresee?

[rudolf]

incrementCounter uses scripting. For 7.x having scripts enabled on Elasticsearch is not a requirement. Although many features rely on it, the intention has been to have most features continue to work without scripting (it's possible that Kibana is anyway completely broken when scripting is disabled we just don't know it, but AFAIK that was the thinking behind this when this API was introduced ~2+ years ago)

[pgayvallet]

it's possible that Kibana is anyway completely broken when scripting is disabled we just don't know it

AFAIK it probably is 🙈

[rudolf]

Although even if we decide that this API is "safe" to use outside of telemetry, I would not want to expose it on public because of the discussion in #84729 (comment) Although we still need to flesh out a more detailed roadmap for working towards that goal, I think it makes sense to not introduce any new API's on the public SavedObjectsClient but instead only expose it on the server SavedObjectsClient and encourage plugins to create HTTP API's that capture their business domain.

[afharo]

Makes sense to me! Thank you both for explaining! FWIW, I'm happy to close this issue.