Re: [RFC PATCH datacenter-manager v3 12/12] ui: registry: add Add-and-Assign wizard from Assign Key dialog

["Lukas Wagner" <l.wagner@proxmox.com>]

On Fri May 15, 2026 at 9:43 AM CEST, Thomas Lamprecht wrote:
> Wire a small two-step wizard reachable from the per-node Assign Key
> dialog's "Add new key..." button: paste a key, click Next, and land
> back on the Assign selector with the just-added key pre-selected
> and the original (remote, node) target preserved.
>
> Optional UX shortcut for the empty-pool case; see the post-`---`
> RFC note for the keep-vs-drop trade-off.
>
> Signed-off-by: Thomas Lamprecht <t.lamprecht@proxmox.com>
> ---
>
> New in v3, sent as RFC and probably should be skipped on apply: it
> crowds the Assign Key dialog with an extra "Add new key..." button and a
> separate two-step wizard that competes with the natural left-panel Add
> path (i.e., just add a key on the left, the selection on the right stays
> intact and thus one can trivially continue there afterwards). Two
> discoverability paths for the same outcome is worse than one slightly
> longer path.
>


Instead of spawning the new wizard from the "Assign Dialog", you could
also try to attempt to combine everything into a single dialog:


	(x) Use existing key from pool

	 pbsc-fffffffffffffffffffffffff            < Regular table, same as already exists
	 pbsc-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


	( ) Add new key to pool
	  [                          ]             < Text field for adding a single key


		       [Cancel] [Assign]


I guess the 'tricky' part is that the "Assign" now has to do 2 POSTS,
one for the key import, one for the assignment, which could be a bit
awkward if there are failures (e.g., what do you do if adding the key to
the pool works, but the assignment fails?). We could have a single "Add
and assign" action in the API to simplify UI implementation, but not
sure how well that fits in the existing API design.

That being said, the UX without this patch is already quite acceptable
and we probably can well live without this shortcut. In general, these
shortcuts are very useful if the user has to otherwise 'backtrack' and
discard previously entered information (Example: A wizard with many
steps, but on the last step the user notices that they need to add some
kind of prerequisite first -- same situation as we recently with the
tokens for automated installations).

Here, closing the "Assign Key" dialog in order to first import the key
to the pool is a rather cheap action, that would (hopefully) not
frustrate users too much.