User Documentation

Getting Started

Install Requirements with Vagrant

Need VirtualBox and Vagrant installed

Run the following command to create and up the colab virtual machine

$ vagrant up

Run the following command to access colab virtual machine

$ vagrant ssh

Install Requirements without Vagrant

Install virtualenvwrapper

Use this link to configure the virtualenvwreapper: https://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.org

Run the following command

$ mkvirtualenv colab

Install Development

On the colab folder use the following commands, or in the colab vagrant (“$ vagrant ssh”)

$ workon colab
$ pip install -e . #(dont need this command if use vagrant)
$ colab-admin migrate #(dont need this command if use vagrant)
$ colab-admin runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Colab settings

View the following file:

$ cat /etc/colab/settings.py

The file /etc/colab/settings.py have the configurations of colab, this configurations overrides the django settings.py

Colab can generate its own default settings file for development environment with

$ colab-admin initconfig > /etc/colab/settings.py

Colab development settings - Log Level

If you used the default settings file from initconfig. You can especify the environment variable COLAB_LOGLEVEL to set which log level you want to show on the console.

You can also set COLAB_DEBUG that is an alias to COLAB_LOGLEVEL=DEBUG

The following log levels exist:

  • DEBUG: Show everything possible.
  • INFO: Show info, and errors.
  • ERROR: Default behavior, show errors, warnings and critical messages.

Example of running runserver showing INFO logs:

$ COLAB_LOGLEVEL=INFO colab-admin runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Widgets

A widget is a piece of HTML that will be inserted in a specific area in a page to render some view.

To configure the widgets you have to edit, or create, the file /etc/colab/widgets_settings.py. Or you can create a py file inside the folder /etc/colab/widgets.d.

Example:

# Widget Manager handles all widgets and must be imported to register them
from colab.widgets.widget_manager import WidgetManager

# Specific code for Gitlab's Widget
from colab_gitlab.widgets import GitlabProfileWidget

WidgetManager.register_widget('profile', GitlabProfileWidget())

In this example the Gitlab’s widget is added in a new tab inside the user profile.

Widgets Areas

List

The list widget area can be found at the user profile. It provides general information like latest news and collaboration.

Button

The button widget area can be found at the user profile. It provides aditional buttons to profile.

Group

The group widget area can be found at the user profile. It provides aditional information to profile.

Dashboard

The dashboard widget area can be found at /dashboard. It provides general information like latest news and collaboration.

Charts

The charts widget area can be found at the user profile page. It provides an area for charts displays.

Core Widgets

Most Relevant Threads

Shows the list of most relevant threads.

# Widget Manager handles all widgets and must be imported to register them
from colab.widgets.widget_manager import WidgetManager

# Specific code for Gitlab's Widget
from colab_gitlab.widgets import GitlabProfileWidget

WidgetManager.register_widget('profile', GitlabProfileWidget())
Latest Threads

Shows the list of latest threads, those threads are get from the public mailling lists.

Groups

Shows the groups that user is subscribed.

Suggested area: group

Group Membership

Adds a button to subscribed in a group.

Suggested area: button

Latest Posted

Shows the list of latest post, those post are get from the public mailling lists from the user.

Suggested area: list

Your Latest Contributions

Shows the list of latest contributions for the user.

Suggested area: list

Latest Collaborations

Shows the list of latest collaborations, in example, articles and blog post done recently.

Suggested area: dashboard

Collaboration Graph

Displays a pie chart of all collaborations that are indexed.

Suggested area: dashboard

Collaboration Chart

Displays a pie chart of all collaborations created by user that are indexed.

Suggested area: charts

Participation Chart

Displays a pie chart of all participations from mail list.

Suggested area: charts

Add a new plugin

  • Atention: replace the brackets, [], for the content presented in the brackets
  • Make sure the application has the following requirements
    • Support for remote user authentication
    • A relative url root
    • A relative static url root, for change url’s of css and javascript
  • Create the plugin configuration for the application
    • on folder: /etc/colab/plugins.d/
    • create file: [plugin_name].py
  • Atention: Any URL used in the plugins’ settings should not be preceded by “/”

Use this template for the plugin configuration file

from colab.plugins.utils.menu import colab_url_factory
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

name = 'colab.plugins.[plugin_name]'

upstream = 'http://[host_of_application]/[relative_url_root]/'

# The private_token is optional
# It is used to access the application data being coupled to colab
# It is recommended to use the provate_token an admin of the application
private_token = '[plugin_private_token_for_data_import]'

urls = {
    'include': '[plugin_module_path].urls',
    'prefix': '[application_prefix]/', # Exemple: http://site.com/[application_prefix]/
}

menu_title = '[menu_title_of_html]'

url = colab_url_factory('[plugin_name]')

menu_urls = {
    url(display=_('[name_of_link_page]'), viewname='[name_of_view_in_the_application]', kwargs={'path': '[page_appication_path]/' }, auth=True),

    # You can have more than one url
    url(display=_('[name_of_link_page]'), viewname='[another_name_of_view_in_the_application]', kwargs={'path': '[another_page_appication_path]/' }, auth=True),
}

Plugins

name

Declares the absolute name of the plugin app as a python import path. Example: directory.something.someplugin

verbose_name

Delclare the description name of the plugin.

upstream

Declares the upstream server url of the proxy. Only declare if the plugin is a proxy.

middlewares

Declares the middlewares of the plugin in a list format.

context_processors

Declares the context processors of the plugin in a list format too.

dependency

Declares the additional installed apps that this plugin depends on. This doesn’t automatically install the python dependecies, only add to django apps.

password_validators

A lista of functions to validade password in the moment it’s set. This allows plugins to define their own password validators. For example if the proxied app requires the password to have at least one upper case character it should provide a password validator for that.

urls

include

Declares the include urls.

prefix

Declares the prefix for the url.

  • Atention: Any URL used in the plugins’ settings should not be preceded by “/”

Extra Template Folders

COLAB_TEMPLATES
Default:() (Empty tuple)

Colab’s extra template folders. Use it to add plugins template files, and remember to use the app hierarchy, e.g if your app name is example, then you should put your templates inside COLAB_TEMPLATES/example. You can also use it to overwrite the default templates, e.g. if you want to overwrite the default footer, you simply need to add a file named footer.html to the folder where COLAB_TEMPLATES points to.

Extra Static Folders

COLAB_STATIC
Default:[] (Empty list)

Colab’s extra static folders. Use it to add plugins static files. It’s used the same way COLAB_TEMPLATES is. Use it to overwrite or add your own static files, such as CSS/JS files and/or images.

Settings

Paste

Social Networks

SOCIAL_NETWORK_ENABLED
Default:False

When this variable is True, the social networks fields, like Facebook and Twitter, are added in user profile. By default, this fields are disabled.

Customization

Home Page

Menu

Templates

Verify Inactive User

ACCOUNT_VERIFICATION_TIME
Default:timedelta(hours=48)

This variable will be used to remove inactive user. By default, this time is 48 hours.