Clinical Timeline Standalone Package and Documentation

[cannin]

Background:

cBioPortal uses the React JS framework to aid in the reusability of components. Some cBioPortal components (i.e., clinical timeline) have been built with the goal of reusability, but require additional work and documentation for the wider community to reuse. The clinical timeline component aids research in understanding how the disease of a patient changes over time for specific samples taken from the patient along with information about their treatment.

Example: https://www.cbioportal.org/patient?sampleId=gbm_columbia_2019_13&studyId=gbm_columbia_2019

Goal:

The goal is to harden (ensure standalone use and document) the clinical timeline component. Documentation and standalone example for a previous version of the component: https://github.com/cBioPortal/clinical-timeline (the repository is for an old prototype; this is the minimum level of documentation expected as outcome from this project).

For the larger project (350h) a secondary goal is to generate a wrapper for the standalone component for reuse within the R Shiny web framework (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/reactR/vignettes/intro_htmlwidgets.html).

Approach:
The clinical-timeline is already a package in the cBioPortal frontend monorepo. We will begin by adding a README file to the existing NPM package that explains how to embed this package into a new create-react-app project. Iteratively we'll add more documentation so it starts looking more similar to the old clinical timeline package README in terms of completeness.

Need skills:

Typescript, Javascript

Code/Repositories:

• https://github.com/cBioPortal/cbioportal-frontend/tree/master/packages/cbioportal-clinical-timeline
• https://github.com/cBioPortal/cbioportal-frontend/blob/master/src/pages/patientView/timeline/timeline_helpers.tsx
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/cbioportal-clinical-timeline

Possible mentors:

Augustin Luna
Ino de Bruijn

[gautamsarawagi]

Can I work on this issue? I went through both the cbioportal frontend and the clinical timeline and have understood the project architecture of this section. I want to work on this.

[Sakshamgupta90]

Hi @cannin, I'm Saksham Gupta, final year student from India. I'm interested to work on this project.
So is there anything I need to do before submitting the proposal?
Regards

[cannin]

@Sakshamgupta90 nothing if you have a finished proposal that clearly shows you understand what is needed, what you will do, and feel confident without feedback before submission. I'm happy to provide feedback beforehand if you have an advanced proposal.

[Karan-Palan]

Hello @cannin . I see this project came last year as well. I read the above comment, since there are no per-requisites, shall I start creating a proposal?

[BUBAAcodes]

Hello 👋 @cannin

I’m really interested in working on this project for GSoC 2025. I have experience with JavaScript, TypeScript, and React, and I’ve been exploring the cBioPortal codebase, especially the clinical timeline component and its existing NPM package.

I’m currently analyzing how to enhance its standalone usability and documentation and would love to discuss potential improvements. Looking forward to collaborating with the community!

[BUBAAcodes]

@cannin & @inodb started getting familiar with R & its package shiny for the better understanding of the project .