Getting a server-side file manager up with Lively.next

[rickmcgeer]

What would you like to achieve?
I'm trying to get Galyleo to load/store server-side files; the basic application is that the user has a dedicated container in the Cloud, with their filesystem on it. I'd like to implement a FileBrowser so that they can store their dashboard files and load them from that store. There are various JS solutions, including:

• https://github.com/Studio-42/elFinder
• https://github.com/psolom/RichFilemanage
• https://www.responsivefilemanager.com/

The file managers that are bundled with Lively, at least the last time I looked, were pretty bare-bones. The browser is terrific, but I'm not sure I can turn that into a user file browser. The basic point is I want this to be very familiar to users, who are pretty comfortable with the Mac and Windows file explorers.

[linusha]

Hi @rickmcgeer,
you are right, the file browser that comes with lively is pretty bare-bones, its this one:

It's hard to provide much guidance here without additional information about what exactly you are trying to do/what these dashboard files are. Are we talking about an arbitrary number of files of different types that comprise one dashboard? Or are we talking about a single file per dashboard?

The iconic thing about the SystemBrowser is the Miller-Column-Layout. In principle, this could be used to browser file hierarchies as well - you could probably reuse the Miller Columns, as they are separate from the System Browser - I do not know how well they are separated though. The key here would be to retrieve different tree data (you could borrow inspiration from the System Browser itself and the File Browser) and then feed the tree data into the miller columns.

In the case that we are talking about one file per dashboard/you are willing to restrict the freedom of users; a solution similar to the project browser/landing page could be possible. There, we basically create these tiles by knowing that stuff can only be stored in a specific folder, and then retrieve the information from the file system via l2l. In the case that you can somehow narrow-down which areas of the file system should be used by which project, you could adapt that to for example create tiles per folder/add the option to add new folder.

I don't know how helpful this is, but it's the best I can do for now with the information I have. If you want to share more info, I am happy to think further about this. What would be worthwhile to think about imo would be is if you are really looking for a fully fledged file browser, or if you "just" want a way to specify paths. And if these can be narrowed down at all or if they could be anywhere.

A nicer file-browser for lively.next in general would be awesome, but our resources are severely limited right now (this is the second lively related thing I did in six weeks or so :(. So it does not make much sense to rely on that for now I think.