add manifest.json

[gko]

I use notes daily and love it. ❤️

I tried many options for a front end on mobile phone, but I find that the web version is just right (a part of some small things, that I will try to fix later).

Motivation

The thing is that when you tap «Add to Home screen» in chrome it always saves the Nextcloud default app (i.e. files) which is in the way when you're trying to quickly add some note.

Solution

I've looked through the code that is responsible of adding the manifest file and found that there is a default app -- theming that looks if the apps/<app>/img/manifest.json file is available and adds it otherwise it generates its own manifest in the ThemingDefaults.php file:

if ($image === 'manifest.json') {
	try {
		$appPath = $this->appManager->getAppPath($app);
		if (file_exists($appPath . '/img/manifest.json')) {
			return false;
		}
	} catch (AppPathNotFoundException $e) {}
	$route = $this->urlGenerator->linkToRoute('theming.Theming.getManifest');
}

but then the main .htaccess file is redirecting all the files to /.

So I decided to make a pull request there where I would allow apps to have their proper manifest files.

Result

With changes to server and the manifest.json within this PR I get:

And I'm able to save Notes app to desktop and access it quickly.

P.S. I also created a sandbox to be able to quickly debug apps.

[korelstar]

Thanks for your contribution! Your PR sounds reasonable. But since it depends on nextcloud/server#18584, I'll wait for that PR to be merged until I merge this one.

However, I'm unsure about the paths in your manifest file: since these are not relative, I doubt that this works if Nextcloud is installed in a subdirectory. Could you please verify this?

[gko]

@korelstar ok I fiddled a bit with different browsers. wherever I've installed notes app (in custom_apps/ or in apps/) it's always resolved via /apps/notes.

[korelstar]

@gko Any news on the pull request on server? I think they are waiting for you to optimize your code (see nextcloud/server#18584 (comment)) ...

[marcelklehr]

FYI, I implemented this with a slight hack in bookmarks, until server supports this natively: https://github.com/nextcloud/bookmarks/blob/master/lib/AugmentedTemplateResponse.php 🤷

[korelstar]

This has been finally implemented directly in server: nextcloud/server#28459
However, thanks for your efforts!