Marketplace Add-Ons

Nuxeo Drive

Updated: July 17, 2023

This page is about Nuxeo Drive 2. For versions 1.x see the page Nuxeo Drive 1.x Dev Documentation.

Installation

The Nuxeo Drive package requires no specific installation steps. It can be installed like any other package from the Marketplace or from the Admin Center.

After Nuxeo Drive has been installed on the server, users have a Nuxeo Drive tab on their Home.

Configuration

Development Workflow

The development workflow is described on that Wiki.

The Stack

Dependabot Status

Nuxeo Drive is written in Python and make heavily use of the Qt framework. This allows to easily create a multi-platform desktop application using the same code base.

Coding Style Guide

We tend to follow the PEP8, that's all.

To help with this requirement, you can automate checks and formatting using pre-commit: it will call predefined hooks and black for you to ensure there is no regression and to keep the code clean.

For core developers, the whole mechanism is installed with the developer environment. But if you are a contributor, you can easily use it:

python -m pip install pre-commit
pre-commit install

Note: on Windows you will need to have Git installed.

Nuxeo Drive Contributor Guide

This guide is for developers willing to work on the Nuxeo Drive codebase itself.

Note that many behaviors of Nuxeo Drive can be customized without actually changing the code of Nuxeo Drive but by contributing to the server side extension points instead.

The projects comes into two parts: the addon deployed on the Nuxeo server, written in Java, and the client written in Python.

Nuxeo Drive client is a Python desktop application that looks for changes on the local machine filesystem in a specific folder and on a remote workspace on the Nuxeo server using the Content Automation HTTP API and propagates those changes one way or the other.

Building the Server Addon

To build the nuxeo-drive addon see the related nuxeo GitHub repository.

To build the Marketplace package see the related marketplace-drive GitHub repository.

Building the Nuxeo Drive Client

See docs/deployment.md.

Requirements Notes

  • The Dependabot will automatically check for updates and opend a PR if needed.
  • :warning: SECURITY: before upgrading a package, ensure its source code and its updated dependencies are safe to distribute.

Client Architecture

Nuxeo Drive architecture

CommandLine

Handle the basic commandline arguments, create the Manager, and depending on the argument create a ConsoleApplication or Application.

Manager

Handle all the generic behavior of Nuxeo Drive: auto-updates, bind of an engine, declaration of different engine types, tracker.

Engine

Handle one server synchronization, can be extend to customize the behavior, it creates all the synchronization structure: QueueManager, LocalWatcher, RemoteWatcher, DAO.

DAO

Abstraction for accessing the SQLite database, each Engine has its own DAO and so database

LocalWatcher

Handle the local scan on startup and then the FS events, updating the States stored in DAO, and if needed queueing the State to be processed

RemoteWatcher

Handle the remote scan for the first synchronization and then the incremental polling from the server

QueueManager

Handle the different types of Processor to process any remote or local modification

RemoteFileProcessor

Specialized thread in uploading document

RemoteFolderProcessor

Specialized thread in create remote folder

LocalFileProcessor

Specialized thread in download document

LocalFolderProcessor

Specialized thread in create local folder

AdditionalProcessor

If the queue is big, some additional Processor will be launch by the QueueManager to either download or upload document

AppUpdater

Handle the auto-update polling and the update download process

Tracker

Use for Analytics, anonymous report of usage

ConsoleApplication

Console behavior implementation

Application

OperatingSystem GUI handles the creation of windows, systray and message

Translator

Load labels translation and offer the translation service as static method

WebDialog

Base of all Nuxeo Drive window, it is basically a WebKit view with a Drive JavaScript object mapped by the JavaScript API

QT is heavily used in the new client. Here is a diagram of the signals/slots connections:

Signals/slots connections

RemoteWatcher logic schemas: https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/3081771a-786b-486e-bfaa-ee7ae77a3807

LocalWatcher logic schemas: https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/21ec315b-3917-44aa-b9bd-5ccedfcfb02f

GUI

Here is the diagram of the GUI section gui_class

DirectEdit

Here is the diagram of the DirectEdit section gui_class

DirectTransfer

Here is the diagram of the DirectTransfer section gui_class

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