Synnefo » Pithos Web Client

The Pithos+ Web client documentation contains information about installation and configuration of the web client along with information about the development of the client (development environment, tools, libraries, API usage etc).

Prerequisites: git, jdk 1.6, ant

Enter the newly created folder

and run ant

ant

Now go to the output folder

cd bin/www/gr.grnet.pithos.web.Pithos

This folder contains the "binaries" (html and javascript actually). Those files should be put somewhere to be served by the web server.

For deploying to pithos.dev.grnet.gr, upload everything to /var/www/pithos_web_client where they are served under /ui.

Important reminder: Due to Same-Origin-Policy the web client should be served under the same domain as the API.

Configuration

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All configuration exists as javascript variables in index.html file. The things that need to be configured are:

loginUrl: The url that the client will redirect the user if she is not logged in (defailt: /im/login?next=). The next= parameter is determined automatically.

authCookie: The name of the authentication cookie that is set by the login process which is external to the web client (default: _pithos2_a).

feedbackUrl: The url that the client should use to POST feedback messages from the user when an error occurs (default: /im/feedback).

The CLOUDBAR_* set of variables is related to the bar that is displayed on the top of the web client 's page. This bar is used to navigate to other services of the cloud and also contains a menu for sendind feedback, inviting other people, logout etc. This bar is also externally configured and the web client just loads it as a script.

CLOUDBAR_ACTIVE_SERVICE: The service that we currently see (in case of the web client it is always pithos).

CLOUDBAR_LOCATION: The url that tha cloudbar script is loaded from (default: /static/im/cloudbar/).

CLOUDBAR_SERVICES: The url that is used to get the available service (default: /im/get_services).

CLOUDBAR_MENU: The url that the menu is loaded from (default: /im/get_menu).

Development environment

-----------------------

The development environment used is Eclipse Indigo with the Google Plugin for Eclipse but other environments can be used without problems. The libraries needed for development is

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) v.2.4.0 (http://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/)

The gwt-user.jar is needed in the classpath in order to compile the source. The gwt-dev.jar is needed to run the development mode server for debugging.

All dependencies are downloaded automatically by the ant build script (build.xml) in the dependencies folder if not already found there.

Building

^^^^^^^^

Building the project consists just of compiling the java source into javascript and html by the GWT compiler. This is done by the ant script (ant target "gwt-compile")

Debugging

^^^^^^^^^

Debugging is done using the GWT development server. The ant script has a special target (run-web-dev-mode) which starts the devmode server, but one can do the same thing from inside Eclipse. In order to use the devmode server, the GWT plugin is needed in the browser. This way the browser communicates with the devmode server and the developer can set breakpoints, examine variable values, evaluate expressions etc for the application that runs in the browser.

Source code structure

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Java source code consists of the following packages:

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client: This is the root packages that containes the Pithos class which is the application entry point and various utility classes like menus, dialogs etc.

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client.foldertree: All classes related to the datamodel and tree widget that displays containers, folders and files.

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client.mysharedtree: All classes related to the datamodel and tree widget that displays the objects shared by me.

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client.othershared: All classes related to the datamodel and tree widget that displays the objects shared to me by other users

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client.grouptree: All classes related to the datamodel and tree widget that displays the groups and users used by the user in order to share files to groups of people more easily.

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client.commands: This packages contains the commands issued by the various menus (right-click menus and toolbar).

gr.grnet.pithos.web.client.rest: This package contains the classes that define the HTTP requests made to the API

gr.grnet.pithos.resources: This folder contains various images used as icons in the application 's UI. Those images are embeded in the javascript code by the GWT compiler for efficiency and therefore they are not served as static files.

gr.grnet.pithos.web.public: This folder contains the index.html page of the application and all related css and other files loaded by it (like the plupload scripts for multiple file uploading).

Authentication is provided by an external service. Upon loading,, the web client checks for the existence of the authentication cookie named '_pithos2_a'. If the cookie is present then it is parsed for the username and authentication token. The format of the cookie content is

The login page url is defined in the index.html file and it must end with a 'next=' url parameter. The value of the parameter will be determined automatically. If the parameter is not present then the login page will not be able to redirect back to the client after a successful login and the user will end up at her profile page.

If there is a container named 'pithos' and a container named 'trash' then it proceeds to the folder tree construction. Otherwise the missing containers will be created with requests

are made to the server to fetch details of the subfolders. We need to know if a subfolder has its own subfolders so that we display the cross sign next to it.

is made for each container. If the container is shared it is added to the tree (under "Shared by me") and the client continues to the next container (this has to be re-visited because it was based on the fact that due to the permission inheritance the subfolders are also shared. Since the inheritance has been removed this is no longer valid).

to get the containers shared by the user and for each container we do the same sequence of requests as in the "Shared by me" case. The difference here is that we don't need to check if the container/folder/file is shared because all requests with a different username always return only objects that are visible to the logged-on user.

The groups tree is contructed with the initial request for the user account data which returns the groups defined by the user along with their members.