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Extension Repository Server API

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dangoor edited this page Feb 28, 2013 · 17 revisions

Server API requirements to support the workflows. See also the proposed server architecture

Requirements

General

  • A REST+JSON API
    • Focused on use within Brackets
    • There may be a web-facing interface of some sort later
    • Clients other than Brackets/Edge Code are not important
    • Consequently, level 2 on the Richardson Maturity Model is likely about right
  • Everything a user needs to be able to find and install extensions should be available without authentication
  • Authenticated APIs must use https
    • Server certificate should be verified to avoid man in the middle attacks (in other words, don't turn this feature off)
  • Authentication information must not be sent over http with unauthenticated requests

Listing

  • Provides everything the Extension Manager needs to display the list of extensions
  • Includes all extensions with an "active" state
  • Provides base URLs (or URL templates) for initiating downloads and getting detailed information (this allows us to move these around without changing the client code)
  • Fields needed:
    • ID of extension (used for constructing download URL, for example)
    • display name of extension
    • name of the extension author
    • date of last update
    • download count (possibly total and "recent" (last week, perhaps) to help with sorting)
    • version number
    • min/max Brackets API version for each version of the extension
    • peer dependency requirements (if peer dependencies are being implemented) for each version of the extension
    • a short description
    • rating
    • thumbnail URL (if available)
    • homepage URL
    • support URL
    • a flag for "has been disabled"
    • a flag for "requires restart"
    • dependencies
    • supported languages
  • if an installed extension is marked "has been disabled", then it will be turned off automatically
  • unauthenticated

Download

  • Downloads the extension package
  • Allows downloading older extension versions
  • unauthenticated

Detail

  • Allows the user to retrieve more detailed information about an extension
  • Fields needed:
    • Long description
    • URLs for additional screenshots if any
    • changelog
    • Ratings breakdown (number of ratings at each count of stars)
    • Reviews
  • unauthenticated

Review

  • Submits a rating (and possibly review) for a an extension
  • Replaces a previous rating/review by the same user if there was one
  • authenticated

Report

  • Used to report that an extension is malicious or causing significant harm
  • User can provide comments with further detail about the abuse
  • Will send email to the Brackets team
  • Sets the state to "pending disable"
    • extensions that are "pending disable" do not appear in listings
    • "pending disable" does not set the "has been disabled" flag in the listings
    • someone from the Brackets team will investigate and change the state to disabled if they determine the extension causes harm
    • "disabled" extensions are turned off on end user computers automatically
  • authenticated

Publish

  • Enables an extension developer to upload an extension
  • Can update an existing extension that the developer owns
  • Uploads a package with metadata
  • Registers the extension and computes any metadata that needs computing (such as converting "nls" directories into language support metadata)
  • authenticated and authorized only for the owner of the extension (or any user, if it's a new extension name)

Manage

  • Allows Brackets team members to change the settings for an extension
  • Can set the state (between active, unlisted, pending disable and disabled)
    • pending disable and unlisted both result in the extension not being listed to users
    • the difference is that we may want to be able to remove crufty old extensions from the listing, but that is not representative of abuse
  • Can set the Brackets API max version
  • authenticated and authorized only for Brackets team members

Notes about Authentication

Usernames/Passwords

If we implement the authenticated APIs using simple usernames/passwords using standard basic auth, implementation is straightforward but has the following drawbacks:

  1. users have yet another username/password
  2. we need to implement the registration flow
  3. we need to implement the whole "forgotten password" exchange

It's not rocket science, and there is possibly reusable code for this, no matter what the server side technology is.

OAuth

Using OAuth, we can allow users to authenticate using their existing accounts. We see Facebook, Twitter and Google used this way all over the place. Relevant to our audience, authentication via GitHub would also be possible. As a quick test to see what was involved, I tried the GitHub sample for Passport. The example was really easy to set up, and I was able to authenticate with GitHub with no trouble.

OAuth is slightly cumbersome in that it requires users to hop over to the authenticating site and then hop back, but the user does not need to be presented with this flow often and it is likely preferable to a new username/password.

Considerations:

  • to build a completely in-Brackets authentication flow, we would need to be able to open a browser context that does not have access to Brackets APIs. (Perhaps a sandboxed iframe?)
  • another option would be to delegate the authentication flow to the user's browser and use a URL handler to get the result back (the Osfoora Twitter client on Mac OS worked this way). This has the advantage of not requiring the user to re-enter their credentials.
  • we'll have to navigate signatures vs. OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens (which have detractors).

OpenID

OpenID has an authentication flow that is as cumbersome as OAuth, but with the disadvantage that it's generally harder to set up and more obscure than OAuth.

Creative Cloud

To investigate: I don't think Creative Cloud authentication is currently open for OAuth-style use outside of Adobe services. If it is, that should definitely be an option.

Recommendation

A minimum viable product for extension installation need not include authentication at all, but it is not something we'd put off for long.

Given that there's work involved in implementing either traditional username/password authentication and OAuth, and that there are mature-looking libraries for OAuth, my suggestion is that we implement authentication using OAuth and skip usernames/passwords altogether.

Strawman APIs

These notes were to help think through the API requirements. They may or may not reflect the desired approach once implementation starts, and were written before the requirements above so they are certainly incomplete.

The overall idea is a typical REST+JSON approach.

Unauthenticated API

GET list

list is called once per day (or when the user forces a refresh) by Brackets. It provides a list of extensions with all of the data needed to provide:

  1. update notifications
  2. listings for the Find tab of the Extension Manager

There may come a time when this is too much data for the client to request every day. With the data gzipped, however, we can go for some time before this would be an issue.

Output example:

[
    {
        "name": "HoverPreview",
        "title": "Hover Preview",
        "description": "Shows a preview when the cursor is hovered over certain items",
        "version": "0.4",
        "screenshot": "http://s3.aws.blah.blah/8675309jennyabcdef",
        "rating": 4.5,
        "downloadsAll": 352122,
        "downloadsRecent": 1021
    },
    {
        "name": "html-templates",
        "title": "HTML Templates",
        "description": "Insert a chosen HTML template into the current file",
        "version": "1.2",
        "rating": 4.0,
        "downloadsAll": 121211,
        "downloadsRecent": 522
    }
]

GET extension/{{name}}/latest/download

Downloads the package for the latest version of the named extension. (See package format for details about the response.)

GET extension/{{name}}/moreinfo

Retrieves detailed info about the extension.

{
    "name": "HoverPreview",
    "title": "Hover Preview",
    "description": "Shows a preview when the cursor is hovered over certain items",
    "longDescription": "Long, *markdownable* description...",
    "version": "0.4",
    "screenshot": "http://s3.aws.blah.blah/8675309jennyabcdef",
    "moreScreenshots": ["http://url". "http://anotherurl"]
    "rating": 4.5,
    "ratingDetail": [20, 1, 3, 150, 225]
    "downloadsAll": 352122,
    "downloadsRecent": 1021,
    "reviews": [
        {
            "rating": 4,
            "title": "Finally!",
            "review": "I've been waiting for this day for the past 25 years."
        }
    ],
    "homepage": "https://github.com/gruehle/HoverPreview",
    "support": "https://github.com/gruehle/HoverPreview/issues",
    "recentChanges": [
        {
            "version": "0.4",
            "description": "Less soup."
        },
        {
            "version": "0.3",
            "description": "Rockets? Yeah, it's got rockets."
        }
    ]
}

Authenticated API

All access to authenticated APIs will be via HTTPS.

Access to the APIs in this section require the user to be logged in.

Ideally, users will be able to use existing logins rather than learning a new password (GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, Google), but starting with a username/password is reasonable. Note: Passport may be one implementation strategy.

As far as authentication goes, we can start as simple as basic auth and move onward to oauth ourselves (user authorizes the copy of Brackets and a token is sent that is kept by the client). oauth "scopes" would provide a standardized mechanism for us to authorize clients to rate/review extensions without the ability to upload extensions. oauth is not the only way to do this, but it is a standard.

POST extension/{{name}}/review

Logs a review for the given extension. If the user has already posted a review for this extension, it is replaced with the new one. The POST body is a JSON object with the review information. Example:

{
    "rating": 4,
    "title": "Fish!",
    "review": "It ate my fish. I didn't like that fish anyway, though."
}

rating is a required integer from 1 to 5. title is an optional review title and review is the optional review text. A review can include only a rating and title, but if review is present, title must be present, too.

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