OX as a Service Provisioning using SOAP

Tutorial: Provision OX as a Service using SOAP

Overview

OX as a Service is using the same code everybody can download and install using our various guides. Since it is a hosted service using a reseller model, the provisioning api is using the Reseller Bundle to extend the usual two administrative layers by an additional one.

Open-Xchange does also not contain a mail server in general, but requires one in order to act like a mail client. OX as a Service is using Dovecot as mail server and thus extends the usual Open-Xchange provisioning capabilities by mechanisms to manage some email specific settings.

Open-Xchange concept of Contexts

In order to provision users and groups into Open-Xchange, it is important to understand, that Open-Xchange is designed for shared hosting environments in a way that it has to serve multiple tenants, customers, domains, or however you want to name it. In Open-Xchange, we call that a Context. A context is a sealed container for users and groups. Users in a context can not see users of other contexts, not can they share data with users of other contexts (with the exception of Open-Xchange publish and subscribe functionality).

A usual scenario is to have a company, a family or in general one end customer in a context. One can also say, a context is a domain, and usually that makes sense, since a company has one domain. However, Open-Xchange contexts are not limited to one domain only.

Open-Xchange concept of provisioning

A plain Open-Xchange installation consists of two administrative levels.

1. root level, usually we call that oxadminmaster
2. context level

oxadminmaster / root

The root, or oxadminmaster account is used to

• add, remove and configure filestores attached to Open-Xchange
• add, remove and configure databases attached to Open-Xchange
• add, remove and configure contexts

However, it can NOT add or remove users and groups, nor any other data within a context!

Instead, it can change parameters like add/remove domains, change per context filesystem quota, etc.

Context admin

The context admin is like an ordinary Open-Xchange user, except that it can add, remove and edit users and groups within Open-Xchange. In addition, it inherits shared data of users, that are deleted.

OX as a Service concept of provisioning

As written before, plain Open-Xchange only has one root account. In a reseller scenario, that would mean if we want resellers to be able to create contexts for their customers, we would have to hand out our root account. Since that is not desirable, we added another layer via the Reseller Bundle as mentioned earlier.

1. root level, usually we call that oxadminmaster
2. subadmin level
3. context level

root and context level don't change, except that context level can be restricted.

The subadmin account can only add, remove or configure contexts. As well as the root account, it can NOT add, remove and configure users within contexts. Contexts created by a subadmin account can not be seen by other subadmin accounts.

Provisioning

Reference implementation

The reference implementation of the European OX as a Service system can be found in the OX as a Service APS package for Parallels Automation.

Workflow

Subadmin credentials

The first requirement is to get subadmin credentials for your company. Please follow the steps documented here to get such an account.

Together with the login and password you will also retrieve the provisioning URL to be used by all SOAP requests. In addition, it is required that you give us a list of ip addresses or network(s) that should be allowed to access the provisioning system.

WSDL files

Just point your browser to the provisioning URL you got from us. You will find some services listed there. You will need the following services from that list:

https://hostname/webservices/OXaaSService?wsdl

OX as a Service specific functions

https://hostname/webservices/OXResellerContextService?wsdl

Context management

https://hostname/webservices/OXResellerUserService?wsdl

User management

and optionally

https://hostname/webservices/OXResellerGroupService?wsdl

Group management

https://hostname/webservices/OXResellerResourceService?wsdl

Resource management

Create a context

Once you have the credentials in place, you are ready to create your first context.

Creating a context requires to create the first user in that context, that is the context admin, see above.

Mandatory settings for a context are

name

name of the context

quota

file quota in MB for that context (Note: that is file, not mail!)

brandtaxonomy

must be set to the login of your subadmin account, see below

Important: In OXaaS, the name of the context must always start with your subadmin login with an underscore appended. E.g. when your subadmin login is johndoe, the all your context names must start with johndoe_!

Optional settings

framecolor

io.ox/dynamic-theme//frameColor

iconcolor

io.ox/dynamic-theme//iconColor

selectioncolor

io.ox/dynamic-theme//selectionColor

logowidth

io.ox/dynamic-theme//logoWidth

logourl

io.ox/dynamic-theme//logoURL

logouturl

io.ox/core//customLocations/logout, see this section for more information on the settings above

id

A numerical id bound to the context. When you create a context, this id will be generated. You will need that later when you manage users. The id can be looked up via the context name.

userAttributes

The settings brandtaxonomy and the other optional settings except id are part of the userAttributes SOAP field. All other settings can easily be set via simple SOAP settings. userAttributes is a hash that contains some settings that are not available in all setups of Open-Xchange. It allows to extend Open-Xchange functionality dynamically like done in OXaaS.

The hash looks like this:

userAttributes => entries => EntryArray

with EntryArray :=

[
  { key   => "somekey"
    value => somevalue },
  { key   => "someotherkey"
    value => someothervalue },
  ...
]

somevalue can be an array again, e.g.:

somevalue => entries => EntryArray

with EntryArray :=

[
  { key   => "somekey"
    value => somevalue },
  { key   => "someotherkey"
    value => someothervalue },
  ...
]

and so on

Example dump using perls Data::Dumper:

          'userAttributes' => {
                              'entries' => [
                                           {
                                             'value' => {
                                                        'entries' => [
                                                                     {
                                                                       'value' => '#0000ff',
                                                                       'key' => 'io.ox/dynamic-theme//selectionColor'
                                                                     },
                                                                     {
                                                                       'value' => '#ff0000',
                                                                       'key' => 'io.ox/dynamic-theme//frameColor'
                                                                     },
                                                                     {
                                                                       'value' => '#00ff00',
                                                                       'key' => 'io.ox/dynamic-theme//iconColor'
                                                                     }
                                                                   ]
                                                      },
                                             'key' => 'config'
                                           },
                                           {
                                             'value' => {
                                                        'entries' => {
                                                                     'value' => 'johndoe',
                                                                     'key' => 'types'
                                                                   }
                                                      },
                                             'key' => 'taxonomy'
                                           }
                                         ]
                            },

Admin User

name

login name of the context admin

password

password

email

email address of the context admin

displayname

displayname (usually surname givenname)

surname

surname

givenname

given name

lang

language, e.g. en_GB, en_US, de_DE, ...

timezone

Java timezone such as Europe/Berlin,

Timezones

To get a list of all available timezones, you can run this short Java program:

import java.util.TimeZone;

public class AllTimeZones {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        for(final String zone : TimeZone.getAvailableIDs() ) {
            System.out.println(zone);
        }
    }

}

Languages

This is the list of currently supported languages in OXaaS:

ja_JP
de_DE
es_ES
es_MX
fr_FR
it_IT
nl_NL
pl_PL
zh_TW
en_US
en_GB

Create users

Creating users requires the following parameters

name

login name of the context admin

password

password

email

email address of the context admin

displayname

displayname (usually surname givenname)

surname

surname

givenname

given name

lang

language, e.g. en_GB, en_US, de_DE, ...

timezone

Java timezone such as Europe/Berlin,

moduleaccess

the module access combination name

mailquota

the mail quota of the user in MB

Timezones and languages like documented earlier.

Valid values for moduleaccess are:

• groupware_standard
• groupware_advanced
• groupware_premium

Other settings are not supported.

Workflow

Create the user in Open-Xchange

• Use the name and password of the context admin user of the context you created earlier and define

a Credentials object.

• Find the numerical id of the context e.g. in using OXResellerContextService->getData(name="contextname")

Use the OXResellerUserService->createByModuleAccessName to create users.

Note: Although there are three create methods in the SOAP user service API, you have to use the method createByModuleAccessName and specify one of the names listed above.

Set mail quota

• Use the name and password of the context admin user of the context you created earlier and define

a Credentials object.

• Find the numerical id of the context e.g. in using OXResellerContextService->getData(name="contextname")
• Find the numerical id of the user either by using OXResellerUserService->getData(name="username") or use/store the return value of OXResellerUserService->createByModuleAccessName

Use the OXaaSService->setMailQuota call to set the mail quota for the user created above.

OXaaS specific methods

getQuotaUsage

createSharedDomain

existsLogin

createDomainCatchall

getQuotaUsagePerUser

listDomainCatchalls

existsMailAlias

setMailQuota

deleteDomainCatchall

Code Examples

Java

Generating the SOAP client

# 1. download apache-cxf tarball, extract it and "cd" into the directory, e.g.
#    tar zxvpf apache-cxf-3.0.0-milestone1.tar.gz; cd apache-cxf-3.0.0-milestone1
# 2. change variables CODEBASE, JAVA_HOME and WSDLURL
# 3. run this script "bash oxaas-wsdl2java"
export JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/j2sdk1.7-oracle/"
CODEBASE="/home/oxgit/workspace/OXaaSJClient/src"
WSDLURL="https://youroxaashost/webservices"

rm -rf $CODEBASE
frontend=jaxws21
dbinding=jaxb

JAXBTMP=/tmp/jaxb$$.xml
rm -f $JAXBTMP
cat<<EOF > $JAXBTMP
<jaxb:bindings version="2.1"
xmlns:jaxb="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jaxb"
xmlns:xjc="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jaxb/xjc"
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   <jaxb:globalBindings generateElementProperty="false"/>
</jaxb:bindings>
EOF

pname="com.openexchange.oxaas.context"
bin/wsdl2java -databinding $dbinding -frontend $frontend -client -impl -d $CODEBASE -keep -b $JAXBTMP \
-p "http://soap.reseller.admin.openexchange.com=${pname}" \
-p "http://dataobjects.rmi.reseller.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.reseller.rmi.dataobjects" \
-p "http://dataobjects.soap.reseller.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.reseller.soap.dataobjects" \
-p "http://dataobjects.soap.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.soap.dataobjects" \
-p "http://dataobjects.rmi.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.rmi.dataobjects" \
-p "http://exceptions.rmi.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.rmi.exceptions" \
-p "http://rmi.java/xsd=${pname}.java.rmi" \
-p "http://io.java/xsd=${pname}.java.io" \
${WSDLURL}/OXResellerContextService?wsdl

pname="com.openexchange.oxaas.user"
bin/wsdl2java -databinding $dbinding -frontend $frontend -client -impl -d $CODEBASE -keep -b $JAXBTMP \
-p "http://soap.reseller.admin.openexchange.com=${pname}" \
-p "http://dataobjects.rmi.reseller.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.reseller.rmi.dataobjects" \
-p "http://dataobjects.soap.reseller.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.reseller.soap.dataobjects" \
-p "http://dataobjects.soap.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.soap.dataobjects" \
-p "http://dataobjects.rmi.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.rmi.dataobjects" \
-p "http://exceptions.rmi.admin.openexchange.com/xsd=${pname}.rmi.exceptions" \
-p "http://rmi.java/xsd=${pname}.java.rmi" \
-p "http://io.java/xsd=${pname}.java.io" \
${WSDLURL}/OXResellerUserService?wsdl

pname="com.openexchange.oxaas.extra"
bin/wsdl2java -databinding $dbinding -frontend $frontend -client -impl -d $CODEBASE -keep -b $JAXBTMP \
-p "http://soap.oxaas.admin.openexchange.com/=${pname}" \
${WSDLURL}/OXaaSService?wsdl

rm -f $JAXBTMP