Firefly-2026: url api: added SIA, clean up of hipsPanel

[robyww]

Firefly-2026: url api: added SIA, clean up of hipsPanel

• Updated todo item in StandaloneFireflyLanding.jsx DEFAULT_CHIPS
• also a little refactor of PositionParser, there was overlap with CoordSys.js

Testing

• https://fireflydev.ipac.caltech.edu/firefly-2026-urlapi/firefly
• try https://fireflydev.ipac.caltech.edu/firefly-2026-urlapi/firefly?api=sia
• try https://fireflydev.ipac.caltech.edu/firefly-2026-urlapi/firefly?api=HipsPanel
• Landing page examples all go to search panels, no direct searches

[jaladh-singhal]

Thanks for doing this @robyww. The landing page examples of SIA and HiPS are consistent now and ?api=sia is working correctly.

But I'm finding ?api=hipsPanel confusing and I think we can improve its design.

[jaladh-singhal]

Suggested change

	url: '?api=hipsPanel&showPanel=true&ra=148.88822&dec=69.06529&sr=4d&uri=ivo://CDS/P/SDSS9/color',
	url: '?api=hipsPanel&showPanel=true&ra=148.88822&dec=69.06529&sr=2d&uri=ivo://CDS/P/SDSS9/color',

Can you zoom more? otherwise I see incomplete patches of HiPS at 4deg FOV and scientist wanted to focus on M81 only.

[jaladh-singhal]

As API user, I found this pretty confusing since execute=false overlaps with showPanel. I gave it more thought... we can remove showPanel, and fold it into the execute pattern

?api=hipsPanel Behaviour	Current params	Proposed params
Open panel	showPanel=true	N/A
Open panel with HiPS list pre-added	showPanel=true + hipsListUrl	hipsListUrl alone
Open panel with uri pre-selected	showPanel=true + uri	uri alone
Load HiPS directly	uri alone or showPanel=true + uri + execute=true	uri + execute=true

Since the rest of the URL API already uses execute=false → open panel, execute=true → submit, hipsPanel can follow the same pattern. showPanel can be dropped entirely - the command is already called hipsPanel, so opening the panel is the default.

About the "N/A" in above table, it's consistent with tap, sia, etc. which also require at least one param since a bare panel can always be opened via ?api=menu&tab=.

Besides, this will need changes in:

• validateHiPSPanel to enforce that hipsListUrl or uri must be present (since bare ?api=hipsPanel correctly falls through to the API command help page).
• "add the toolbar option" branch to run when execute=false (i.e. whenever the panel is shown) since it currently only runs inside the showPanel=true block.

[robyww]

HiPS panel was added for rubin, it has three uses. add a new hips service (hipsListUrl), showing the panel, or searching. It was added for rubin so they could bring firefly up with a extra hips configurations for experimenting. These configuration can show up in other places beside the HiPS panel.

This is different than most search panels.

i agree that we needed to add execute and set the uri correctly. However, I don't agree we should remove showPanel. Having showPanel is not an accident it is necessary to completely implement all the use cases. It could be refactored but I don't thing there is a better way that how it is. Besides, I don't want to break the backward compatibility.

[jaladh-singhal]

To preserve the backward compatibility, we can safely remove execute param since showPanel=falsy is equivalent to execute=true.

Then the param descriptions (from User's POV) become:

• showPanel: {desc:'show HiPS panel'}, -> showPanel: {desc: 'Show HiPS search panel. If undefined or false, loads the HiPS (executes the HiPS search'},
• uri: {desc:'not using the showPanel parameter, the HiPS will load, this is the same as cmd=hips'} -> uri: {desc:'URI of the HiPS to load, same as in cmd=hips. If showPanel is true, it selects the HiPS from the HiPS list else it loads the HiPS.'},
• execute: 'use with showPanel, true or false - if true execute the HiPS load' -> delete

Then you will just need couple of lines of changes in code to remove the execute branch (L267-L268). And else if you added in L271 is already ensuring showPanel=false + uri executes the HiPS search.