ocis/services/web

Web

The web service embeds and serves the static files for the Infinite Scale Web Client, whose source lives in-tree under web/. Note that clients will respond with a connection error if the web service is not available.

The web service also provides a minimal API for branding functionality like changing the logo shown.

Custom Compiled Web Assets

If you want to use your custom compiled web client assets instead of the embedded ones, then you can do that by setting the WEB_ASSET_PATH variable to point to your compiled files. See ownCloud Web / Getting Started and ownCloud Web / Setup with oCIS for more details.

Web UI Configuration

• Single configuration settings of the embedded web UI can be defined via WEB_OPTION_xxx environment variables.
• A json based configuration file can be used via the WEB_UI_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.
• If a json based configuration file is used, these configurations take precedence over single options set.

Web UI Options

Besides theming, the behavior of the web UI can be configured via options. See the environment variables WEB_OPTION_xxx for more details.

Web UI Config File

When defined via the WEB_UI_CONFIG_FILE environment variable, the configuration of the web UI can be made with a json based file.

Embedding Web

Web can be consumed by another application in a stripped down version called “Embed mode”. This mode is supposed to be used in the context of selecting or sharing resources.

For more details see the developer documentation ownCloud Web / Embed Mode. See the environment variables: WEB_OPTION_MODE and WEB_OPTION_EMBED_TARGET to configure the embedded mode.

Web Apps

The administrator of the environment is capable of providing custom web applications to the users. This feature is useful for organizations that want to provide third party or custom apps to their users.

It's important to note that the feature at the moment is only capable of providing static (js, mjs, e.g.) web applications and does not support injection of dynamic web applications (custom dynamic backends).

Loading Themes

Web themes are loaded, if added in the Infinite Scale source code, at build-time from <ocis_repo>/services/web/assets/themes. This cannot be manipulated at runtime.

Additionally, the administrator can provide custom themes by storing it in the path defined by the environment variable WEB_ASSET_THEMES_PATH.

With the theme root directory defined, the system needs to know which theme to use. This can be done by setting the WEB_UI_THEME_PATH environment variable.

The final theme is composed of the built-in and the custom theme provided by the administrator via WEB_ASSET_THEMES_PATH and WEB_UI_THEME_PATH.

For example, Infinite Scale by default contains a built-in ownCloud theme. If the administrator provides a custom theme via the WEB_ASSET_THEMES_PATH directory like, WEB_ASSET_THEMES_PATH/owncloud/themes.json, this one will be used instead of the built-in one.

Some theme keys are mandatory, like the common.shareRoles settings. Such mandatory keys are injected automatically at runtime if not provided.

Loading Applications

Web applications are loaded, if added in the Infinite Scale source code, at build-time from <ocis_repo>/services/web/assets/apps. This cannot be manipulated at runtime.

Additionally, the administrator can provide custom applications by storing them in the path defined by the environment variable WEB_ASSET_APPS_PATH.

This environment variable defaults to the Infinite Scale base data directory $OCIS_BASE_DATA_PATH/web/assets/apps, but can be redefined with any path set manually.

The final list of available applications is composed of the built-in and the custom applications provided by the administrator via WEB_ASSET_APPS_PATH.

For example, if Infinite Scale contains a built-in extension named image-viewer-dfx and the administrator provides a custom application named image-viewer-obj via the WEB_ASSET_APPS_PATH directory, the user will be able to access both applications from the WebUI.

Application Structure

• Applications always have to follow a strict structure.
  Everything else is skipped and not considered as an application.

  • Each application must be in its own directory accessed via WEB_ASSET_APPS_PATH.
  • Each application directory must contain a manifest.json file.
  • Each application directory can contain a config.json file.

• The manifest.json file contains the following fields:

  • entrypoint - required
    The entrypoint of the application like index.js, the path is relative to the parent directory.
  • config - optional
    A list of key-value pairs that are passed to the global web application configuration apps.yaml.

Application Configuration

If a custom configuration is needed, the administrator must provide the required configuration inside the $OCIS_BASE_DATA_PATH/config/apps.yaml file.

NOTE: An application manifest should never be changed manually, see Using Custom Assets for customisation.

The apps.yaml file must contain a list of key-value pairs which gets merged with the config field. For example, if the image-viewer-obj application contains the following configuration:

{
  "entrypoint": "index.js",
  "config": {
    "maxWidth": 1280,
    "maxHeight": 1280
  }
}

The apps.yaml file contains the following configuration:

image-viewer-obj:
  config:
    maxHeight: 640
    maxSize: 512

optional each application can have its own configuration file, which will be loaded by the WEB service.

{
  "config": {
    "maxWidth": 320
  }
}

The Merge order is as follows: local.config overwrites > global.config overwrites > manifest.config. The result will be:

{
  "external_apps": [
    {
      "id": "image-viewer-obj",
      "path": "index.js",
      "config": {
        "maxWidth": 320,
        "maxHeight": 640,
        "maxSize": 512
      }
    }
  ]
}

Besides the configuration from the manifest.json file, the apps.yaml or the config.json file can also contain the following fields:

• disabled - optional
  Defaults to false. If set to true, the application will not be loaded.

Using Custom Assets

Besides the configuration and application registration, in the process of loading the application assets, the system uses a mechanism to load custom assets.

This is useful for cases where just a single asset should be overwritten, like a logo or similar.

Consider the following: Infinite Scale is shipped with a default web app named image-viewer-dfx which contains a logo, but the administrator wants to provide a custom logo for that application.

This can be achieved using the path defined via WEB_ASSET_APPS_PATH and adding a custom structure like WEB_ASSET_APPS_PATH/image-viewer-dfx/. Here you can add all custom assets to load like logo.png. On loading the web app, custom assets defined overwrite default ones.

This also applies for the manifest.json file, if the administrator wants to provide a custom one.

Miscellaneous

Please note that Infinite Scale, in particular the web service, needs a restart to load new applications or changes to the apps.yaml file.