Menubar app to check who is on vacation

[pheyvaer]

Pitch

Manually checking your calendar to quickly see who is on vacation is a hassle. It would be easier to have menubar app that shows in a glance who is on vacation today.

Desired solution

A menubar app that reads the vacation days from multiple people's pods and shows who is on vacation today in a pop-up window. The vacation days might only be readable after authentication.

Acceptance criteria

• The user starts the app and provides their credentials for logging in to their pod. Starting the app on the command line is ok.
• The user configures where the vacation days are found. The configuration can be via a file.
• An icon is shown in the menubar when the app is running.
• When the user clicks on the icon, a pop-up window appears that shows who is on vacation.
• Optional: it shows the upcoming vacation days as well.

Pointers

• You find a first attempt at https://github.com/pheyvaer/solid-menubar-app. It uses Electron: allows us to reuse existing JavaScript libraries and makes it cross-platform.
• KNoodle already allows to show people's vacation days.

[pheyvaer]

You find the proof-of-concept at https://github.com/pheyvaer/solid-menubar-app. You find a screencast of the app here.

Use the following instructions to run the app locally yourself:

1. Clone the repo
2. npm i.
3. cd pod-example-data
4. node create-example-pods.js (populate the test pods on the playground)
5. cd .. (back to the root of repo)
6. cp pod-example-data/config.json config.json (copy the example config that works with the test pods)
7. npm start
8. The app appears in the menubar (the umbrella on the beach)

Note that I only tested this on macOS, but it should work cross-platform.

[bjdmeest]

Everything works! Actions points as next step after this challenge:

• [ ] The 'client-credentials.js' lib should be a separately maintained library. There are too many hard-coded links in there to expect a Solid developer to know.
  • Are these hard-coded links dependent on the pod technology, i.e. are they standardized or not? If not, this should probably be flagged in the W3C group
  • How much of BashLib could be reused for this? Why isn't it reused? If copy-pasting is easier, I would like to know which sources where used to get to this code
• [ ] Same for 'create-example-pods.js': this is pretty standard functionality that should be a separately maintained library
  • How much of BashLib could be reused for this? Why isn't it reused? If copy-pasting is easier, I would like to know which sources where used to get to this code
• [ ] I have the feeling that have a separate client credential is a bit of the key for the authorization part of this app, I'd suggest to clarify that in the readme

Minor

• Are there suggestions to make the idSecrets.json file more safe?
• app.js line 63: I have the feeling that this is used for debugging, I suggest to add some documentation on that, feels very useful

[jeswr]

The 'client-credentials.js' lib should be a separately maintained library. There are too many hard-coded links in there to expect a Solid developer to know.

I just had a look at this file - as far as I can tell from it this means that this extension will only work for CSS. Is that correct?

[pheyvaer]

@jeswr v1 yes, which is what Ben checked. v2 will support OIDC as well.

[pheyvaer]

@jeswr I'm mistaken. I thought this was another challenge 😅 This only works with CSS yes. I haven't checked how that would work with OIDC. This only affects the authentication part at start-up though, but ideally we can make it work for all Solid pods.

[pheyvaer]

You find the report here.