General CMS Approach

[wlaurance]

The content in our CMS will be models. We are going to use a schema builder tool called alpaca http://www.alpacajs.org/.

The inputs to the module will be an array of alpacajs schema objects, firebase url, and firebase credentials.

The outputs will be generated forms that match the schema types and that CRUD those schema types against the provided firebase credentials.

I see each instance of a firebase-cms running on heroku where the inputs are provided by the ENV.

There are three main components of the firebase-cms.

1. Module to read provided schemas and generate forms
2. Module to handle CRUD Actions on provided schemas
3. Auth/Authorization for CRUDing against provided schemas

Component 1 is generally solved by alpacajs and will be general pipe fitting.

Component 2 is to build a generic API where the frontend alpacajs module hits on it's host. Then using a server side component, make the necessary requests to/from firebase using the credentials from the ENV.

Component 3 is a mixture of frontend code and server side code. Eventually this will utilize the firebase security rules.

[petergault]

Follow up notes:

• The firebase CMS will be a generic application for CRUDing Firebase content.
• We will launch specific instances of the app for each CMS.
• We can use the heroku free tier to host each app.

[marcellosachs]

@wlaurance alpaca seems pretty cool, and it will be nice to be able to make this modular. One question is - why are we hitting a server and then hitting firebase, why not just hit firebase directly from the alpaca form?

[marcellosachs]

(or some angular service that the service handling the alpaca form depends on)

[marcellosachs]

also @wlaurance @kriskelly does defining a schema save that much time over defining an angular form (https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/forms) ? You guys have more experience with angular but thought I'd be the devil's advocate.

[marcellosachs]

this is another potential - https://github.com/Textalk/angular-schema-form

[wlaurance]

Nice find on the angular-schema-form @marcellosachs

[wlaurance]

So a follow up after yesterday's conversation.

• the angular-firebase-cms will be a mountable module into an existing angular firebase application
• We will use Firebase custom auth to provide authorization/authentication against the data in the firebase data store.
• We will use the https://github.com/firebase/blaze_compiler to make these rules.

[marcellosachs]

@wlaurance thanks, glad my babble came to some use!