Serve dashboards with a prefix

[mao-liu]

Hi,

I recently tried to collect the several web services under one Apache server, one of them is the dashboards server. Each of these services run on a different localhost port, and Apache acts as the reverse-proxy to direct different URLs to different ports based on the prefix.

e.g. my.domain.com/jupyter --> http://127.0.0.1:9500/jupyter, jupyter hub serving on localhost:9500/jupyter my.domain.com/jenkins --> http://127.0.0.1:8080/jenkins, jenkins serving on localhost:8080/jenkins ...`

I cannot find a way to specify a prefix for the dashboards server. I can only get it to serve on http://host:port, whereas I would like to be able to serve at http://host:port/prefix.

My initial dig into this points to some changes required in the templates, particularly the way /css and /components are linked in the templates.

Is this an easy thing to implement? I am not very familiar with node/express, but will be happy to have a go at a pull request.

Cheers,

[parente]

@ch41rmn We'd love a PR if you're willing to tackle this.

You are correct that the dashboard server is not currently relocatable under different paths. I'm pretty certain there is no major impediment preventing it, just a matter of finding all the spots that might break. The ones that come to mind are:

• The templates, as you pointed out. These should use relative path references wherever possible. If they can't they'll need to read a base URL config option that has to be defined.
• The express router. The root path needs to be made configurable via a base URL option. Hopefully all of the changes should be in app.js, either by adding the base URL value to all of the app.use() calls or by defining a new root router and tacking all of the exiting paths onto it. (ref: http://bulkan-evcimen.com/using_express_router_instead_of_express_namespace.html)
• Any places that generate links, like https://github.com/jupyter-incubator/dashboards_server/blob/792dc792cfa5358baede419b8918dff30dd1db16/routes/auth-routes.js#L26 (though that one is already driven by configuration, so might not need any work.)

@jhpedemonte, @dalogsdon can you think of other spots that would need updating?

[dalogsdon]

I think those mentioned by @parente are the main points.

• For templates (mainly the listing view but possibly others) we are using Handlebars. You will probably need to pass the prefix when rendering. In the template, if a variable isn't set, it will resolve to an empty string.
• For the router, I'd vote for a root router. That way it's only in once place and you don't have to think about the prefix in the child routes.
• The config parameter PUBLIC_LINK_PATTERN will need to include the prefix. See config.json. The config uses Hjson

[parente]

Fixed by #292.