AppSuite:Capabilities

Synopsis: How to use capabilities so that your new AppSuite plugin can be enabled or disabled.

What are capabilities?

Usecase

You write a new UI app or plugin (chat module, for example) and in addition, you want to make sure that only a specific set of users or contexts within the system are allowed to use it.

Example: Your chat app should only be available after a user has bought it in your online shop. To do so, you will need to implement the capabilities logic within your UI app or plugin and restrict it to a user or context marked accordingly (called "premium" in further examples).

Set a capability

First, disable it for everyone as default (or enable it for everyone, depending on what your aim is).

In /opt/open-xchange/etc/[myproduct].properties:

 com.openexchange.capability.[myproduct]=false # off for everyone

Then restart the OX Application Server and afterwards use the general OX AppSuite commandline tools to enable the capability/capabilities.

The commandline tools used in the following examples are located in:

 /opt/open-xchange/sbin

In this example, only for a specific user:

 changeuser ... --config/com.openexchange.capability.[myproduct]=true

...or for a full context:

 changecontext -c ... --config/com.openexchange.capability.[myproduct]=true

...or set the capability to a context set:

 changecontext -c ... --taxonomy/types=premium

To get the capability/capabilities working for context sets (like above), you also need to edit the contextSet files in:

 /opt/open-xchange/etc/contextSets/premium.yml

And add the corresponding capability/capabilities:

 premium:
    com.openexchange.capability.[myproduct]: true
    withTags: premium

Then restart the OX Application Server!

Query capabilities via the HTTP API

Query:

 GET /appsuite/api/capabilities?action=all&session=991fd40f635b45...

Response:

 {"data":[{"id":"oauth","attributes":{}},{"id":"webmail","attributes":{}},{"id":"document_preview","attributes":{}},{"id":"printing","attributes":{}},{"id":"spreadsheet","attributes":{}},{"id":"gab","attributes":{}},{"id":"multiple_mail_accounts","attributes":{}},{"id":"publication","attributes":{}},{"id":"rss_bookmarks","attributes":{}},{"id":"linkedin","attributes":{}},{"id":"filestore","attributes":{}},{"id":"ical","attributes":{}},{"id":"rt","attributes":{}},{"id":"olox20","attributes":{}},{"id":"forum","attributes":{}},{"id":"active_sync","attributes":{}},{"id":"conflict_handling","attributes":{}},{"id":"rss_portal","attributes":{}},{"id":"oxupdater","attributes":{}},{"id":"infostore","attributes":{}},{"id":"contacts","attributes":{}},{"id":"collect_email_addresses","attributes":{}},{"id":"drive","attributes":{}},{"id":"rss","attributes":{}},{"id":"pinboard_write_access","attributes":{}},{"id":"mobility","attributes":{}},{"id":"calendar","attributes":{}},{"id":"participants_dialog","attributes":{}},{"id":"edit_public_folders","attributes":{}},{"id":"text","attributes":{}},{"id":"groupware","attributes":{}},{"id":"msisdn","attributes":{}},{"id":"carddav","attributes":{}},{"id":"tasks","attributes":{}},{"id":"portal","attributes":{}},{"id":"mailfilter","attributes":{}},{"id":"read_create_shared_folders","attributes":{}},{"id":"vcard","attributes":{}},{"id":"pim","attributes":{}},{"id":"caldav","attributes":{}},{"id":"projects","attributes":{}},{"id":"usm","attributes":{}},{"id":"webdav","attributes":{}},{"id":"dev","attributes":{}},{"id":"delegate_tasks","attributes":{}},{"id":"freebusy","attributes":{}},{"id":"subscription","attributes":{}},{"id":"linkedinPlus","attributes":{}},{"id":"autologin","attributes":{}},{"id":"webdav_xml","attributes":{}},{"id":"twitter","attributes":{}}]}

Here id is the name of the capability.

Note that the LinkedIn support was removed since 7.10.0

Query capabilities in the UI

 require(['io.ox/core/capabilities'], function (cap) { if cap.has('[myproduct]' { ... } );

To just list all:

 _(ox.serverConfig.capabilities).pluck("id").sort();

Require the capabilities in your UI manifest file

 {
    namespace: ...
    requires: '[myproduct]'
 }

Now your plugin will only be loaded if the capability '[myproduct]' is set for a specific user, context, context set.

Testing the capabilities

• For testing purposes use an URL parameter to test capabilities.

Add the following parameter to your AppSuite URL in the browser to activate:

 &cap=[myproduct]

or use

 &disableFeature=[myproduct]

to disable a certain capability.

In general, after adding those URL parameters, you need to reload the UI to temporarly test/enable the set capability.

Further informations

• See the dedicated wiki page of the ConfigCascade mechanism for more details.
• If you want to know about existing capabilities and the way they are used for upsell, see AppSuite:Upsell#Capabilities_and_Upsell_triggers