Open Source FDC3 Implementation using Electron and open source app directory

[nkolba]

Please note that only FINOS members can propose new projects. If you're interested in membership, see https://www.finos.org/membership-benefits#become-a-member.

Business Problem

Currently, although FDC3 is an open source standard, there are no fully open source implementations that include all elements of the standard and provides a viable core for FDC3 developers.

Proposed Solution

A community maintained project that provides an open source core for FDC3 development. This includes both an FDC3 Desktop Agent implemented in Electron, and an App Directory implementation.

Tentative Roadmap

Short/medium term goals are:

• fix known issues
• minor UX improvements
• add FDC3 compliance tests
• support extensibility
• improve scope of demo apps and tools

Current State

The project supports FDC3 1.2 with full API coverage. It has recently been made public and currently has 2 contributors.

Existing Materials

https://github.com/nkolba/electron-fdc3

Development Team

Maintainers

Committed maintainer is Nicholas Kolba, nick@kolbito.com, nkolba

Confirmed contributors

• Colin Eberhardt, ScottLogic, ColinEberhardt
• Riko Eksteen, Adaptive, Rikoe

Target Contributors

FDC3 developers, financial app developers, general electron/web developers.

Infrastructure needs

Mailing list

What's next?

Upon submission of this project proposal, the FINOS team will get in touch with you to discuss next steps.

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Contribution process (v. 1.1, last updated on December 20, 2021)

Below is the list of tasks that FINOS Team and the contribution author go through in order to complete the FINOS contribution process. Please do not edit these contents at contribution time!

Kick-off meeting

• [x] Set up kick-off meeting with project leads
• [x] Run kick-off meeting
  • [x] FINOS overview (if necessary)
  • [x] FINOS Maintainers cheatsheet
  • [x] FINOS Project/Standards Governance
  • [x] FINOS Project Lifecycle
  • [x] Walk through the checklist, answer questsion and remove items that don't apply
  • [x] Write and send contribution proposal announcement (optional - see below)

FINOS Contrib POC

• [x] Identify and Assign FINOS Project Coordinator / Strategic Advisor - Rob Moffat

Proposal (Lead Maintainer)

• [x] Lead maintainer to send out announcement to community@finos.org using this template:

  Dear FINOS Community, 
  
  We would like to propose a new FINOS project. Please review the proposal details at (_TODO: add link to the GitHub issue proposal_).
  
  If you're interested in participating, please :+1: the GitHub issue proposal and drop a comment with your name, org and email
  
  Thanks a lot,

Identify project meta (Lead: FINOS Contrib POC, Support: FINOS Marketing)

• Project main coordinates
  • [x] Project Name - Electron FDC3 Desktop Agent & App Directory
  • [x] Project Slug - electron-fdc3
  • [x] Does the name have a registered trademark?
  • [x] Request logo design
• [x] Category and sub-category (for FINOS Landscape) - platform and runtimes / containers
• [x] Is there existing code? If so, is it public? If not, can you grant read access to user github.com/finos-admin ? - https://github.com/nkolba/electron-fdc3
• Was the project ever released? If so, are releases public? And what's the latest released version? - no release
• [x] Team composition: lead maintainer and other maintainers
• Are meetings currently held for the project? - No
• [x] Is Continuous Integration used? If so, which system is used? - GitHub Actions
• [x] Is there an existing Documentation website? If not, would you like to have one? - Only README available

Maintainers, contributors and CLAs (Lead: FINOS Contrib POC, Support: FINOS infra)

• [x] For each maintainer identified in the previous step, collect: the following info:
  • Fullname
  • GitHub username
  • Corporate email address
• [x] Identify other existing contributors (assuming there's a contribution history (eg Git history)
• [x] Check if maintainers and other contributors are all covered by FINOS CLA

Project Communication Channel(s)

• Ask maintainers which communications channels they'd like to use
• Asynchronous
  • [x] GitHub Issues (public)
  • Google Groups - reusing fdc3@finos.org
• Synchronous
  • [x] FINOS Slack Channel (general public Slack / leadership private Slack)
• [x] Create the identified communication channels during infra set up
• [x] Link communication channels linked front and center in the project README.md

Code validation (only if code is contributed) (Lead: FINOS Infra)

• [x] The codebase doesn’t have HIGH or CRITICAL CVEs across direct and transitive libraries
• [x] The codebase doesn’t have any unfriendly licenses across direct and transitive libraries
• [x] (optional - if a build system is provided) The build process runs successfully
• [x] finos-admin is Admin of the GitHub repository to transfer
• [x] The codebase doesn’t include any patent or copyright that conflicts with FINOS Governance and bylaws (to be validated with FINOS Legal team)
• [x] Apply project blueprint contents - see ODP docs
  • [x] Ensure that the proper project governance is in the CONTRIBUTING.md file
• [x] All incubating criteria are checked and documented below

Approval (Lead: FINOS Infra)

• [x] Assign issue to Executive Director (@mindthegab) to trigger voting
• [x] (optional) if additional socialization is required, the Executive Director may bring projects to the FINOS Governing Board
• [x] FINOS accepts the contribution (and the contribution process can move forward)

Code transfer (Lead: FINOS Infra)

• [x] Backup (even with screenshot) GitHub permissions of the repository to transfer
• [x] Check GitHub repository transfer requirements:
  • [x] finos-admin has Admin to all repositories to transfer
  • [x] finos-admin ia allowed to transfer repositories out of the org
  • [x] if the repository is owned by a user (and not an org), the user must be able to transfer the repository to finos-admin
• [x] Review FINOS project blueprint contents
  • [x] Project title/description in README
  • [x] Project badge in README
  • [x] License in README
  • [x] Contributing in README
  • [x] CONTRIBUTING.md
  • [x] LICENSE (look for {} placeholders)
• [x] Check protection settings and disable after transfer if necessary
• [x] Transfer all code assets as GitHub repositories under github.com/finos
• [x] Invite GitHub usernames to GitHub FINOS Org
• [x] Create <project-name>-maintainers GitHub team and invite users
• [x] Configure finos-admins (Maintain role) and finos-staff (Triage role) team permissions

Infra setup (Lead: FINOS Infra)

• [x] Enable EasyCLA
• [x] Add project to metadata
• [x] Add identities, orgs and affiliations to metadata (deprecated by EasyCLA)
• [x] Add logo to FINOS landscape
  • [x] Create staging branch on finos/finos-landscape
  • [x] Merge finos/metadata changes on master (will udpdate landscape.yml in finos/finos-landscape)
  • [x] Create PR from staging branch on finos/finos-landscape
  • [x] Review Netlify preview
  • [x] Merge PR
• [x] Add project maintainers emails to finos-project-maintainers@finos.org list
• [x] Add project maintainers GitHub usernames to the project-maintainers Team
• [x] Onboard project on LF systems (SFDC, Insights, EasyCLA, Groups.io)
• [x] Update release coordinates and code namespace to include finos - use @finos scope in package.json - see https://github.com/finos/electron-fdc3/blob/main/package.json#L2
• Enable security vulnerabilities scanning
  • [x] WhiteSource
  • [x] GitHub Security

Announcement (Lead: FINOS Contrib POC)

• [x] Lead maintainer works with FINOS marketing to send out announcement to announce@finos.org , checkout announcement template at the Contribution page
• [x] Notify FINOS Contrib POC and FINOS marketing (@grizzwolf + finos-marketing internal Slack channel)

[mindthegab]

Thanks for the submission @nkolba (tagging @finos/fdc3-maintainers, @finos/fdc3-editors @finos/fdc3-participants for visibility) and the related note to the FINOS Community List.

I suggest we keep the contribution open at least for another week to encourage further feedback - we will also be reviewing this contribution at the upcoming 4/20 Governing Board meeting, so expect more socialization.

Thanks!

[bingenito]

I gave this a try and really liked it. I will fully admit that when I first launched into really trying to understand FDC3 I was a bit lost from reading documentation alone as it required a more hands on tutorial. The prior chrome example you provided was invaluable to me getting a concrete understanding of how to not only use FDC3 workflows effectively but also was foundational to implementing support for our own proprietary container. It was a bit constrained in its practicality due to being an extension. This offers a full working example on top of an open source container which will further extend the reach and applicability of FDC3. I would love to see a default tab for the workbench added.

[bingenito]

@nkolba very recent cve for prototype pollution in async came out which has results in two high vulnerabilities due to transitive dependencies in what is currently being reviewed. Luckily an audit fix does resolve it.

[nkolba]

Thanks @bingenito !

I've just merged a PR to address the vulnerabilities.

[nkolba]

and default tab for workbench should be simple. let's get it on the roadmap!

[mistryvinay]

Thanks for creating this @nkolba being new to FDC3 this was a great way to get up and running with a reference implementation within an Electron container.

Look forward to seeing how this project evolves.

[opoupeney]

Great to see a reference implementation @nkolba, this is a perfect accelerator for the FDC3 standard’s adoption.

Olivier.

On Apr 22, 2022, at 8:31 AM, Vinay Mistry @.***> wrote:

 Thanks for creating this @nkolba being new to FDC3 this was a great way to get up and running with a reference implementation within an Electron container.

Look forward to seeing how this project evolves.

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[kriswest]

Looks like a great start @nkolba! I'm also looking forward to seeing it evolve and hopefully to increase uptake of the standard.

I've dropped you a PR with an FDC3 Workbench appD record:

• https://github.com/nkolba/electron-fdc3/pull/25 (needs a screenshot, rather than a logo in the images field, but otherwise works well)

A few things I noticed along the way to add to the todo list:

• Calling joinChannel works, but the channel selector doesn't show the channel
• The appD records go a little off-spec - a reference implementation would ideally be 100% to spec:
  • icon field in addition to icons,
  • using icons[].icon rather than icons[].src
  • start_url field (a URL field was missing in 1.0-1.2, but will be corrected in 2.0 - I think the standard approach was to embed the URL in the manifest field)
• I couldn't figure out how to open an app in a new window (rather than browserview/tab) other than by raising an intent...
• browserviews need a background color set on them (https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/browser-view#viewsetbackgroundcolorcolor-experimental) to avoid display issues when you shuffle them around (assuming you are using setTopBrowserview) as they default to transparent, otherwise add and remove the browserviews to avoid this.

[kprado1969]

very useful - definitely a must a have in our community

[jonfreedman]

I think this together with the workbench contributed by Cosaic last year are most of the way there in terms of being able to reliably test FDC3 applications - it'll be a great result if we can build the tooling to fully automate testing both in isolation and at the integration level between apps.

[mindthegab]

Given the overwhelming support for this issue by @finos/fdc3-maintainers like @kriswest and @rikoe, financial institutions like @bingenito and @kprado1969, buy-side firms like @jonfreedman and vendors like @opoupeney and @mistryvinay, we will approve this contribution for incubation in FINOS. Congrat @nkolba!

@maoo @TheJuanAndOnly99 please proceed with onboarding, and @Julia-Ritter can provide logo once it's been approved.