External sites

This application allows an admin to add a link in the Nextcloud web interface Apps menu that points to an external website. By simply entering the URL and the name for the external site, an icon appears. When this icon is clicked by a user, the external website appears in the Nextcloud frame. For the user, this external site appears as if it is part of Nextcloud but, in fact, this can be any external URL.

🛠 State of maintenance

While there are many things that could be done to further improve this app, the app is currently maintained with limited effort. This means:

The main functionality works for the majority of the use cases
We will ensure that the app will continue to work like this for future releases and we will fix bugs that we classify as 'critical'
We will not invest further development resources ourselves in advancing the app with new features
We do review and enthusiastically welcome community PR's

We would be more than excited if you would like to collaborate with us. We will merge pull requests for new features and fixes. We also would love to welcome co-maintainers.

OCS API

It is also possible to get the sites via an OCS endpoint. The request must be authenticated. Only sites for the user´s language are returned:

curl  -H "OCS-APIRequest: true" \
  https://admin:admin@localhost/ocs/v2.php/apps/external/api/v1

Response

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ocs>
 <meta>
  <status>ok</status>
  <statuscode>200</statuscode>
  <message>OK</message>
 </meta>
 <data>
  <element>
   <id>23</id>
   <name>Homepage</name>
   <url>https://localhost/index.php</url>
   <type>link</type>
   <redirect>0</redirect>
   <icon>https://localhost/external.svg</icon>
  </element>
 </data>
</ocs>

Explanation

Field	Type	Description
id	int	Numeric identifier of the site
name	string	Name of the site, ready to use
url	string	URL that should be framed/linked to
redirect	int	Whether the link should be opened inline or in a new window
type	string	Can be one of `link`, `settings` or `quota`; see this issue for details
icon	string	Full URL of the icon that should be shown next to the name of the link

ETag / If-None-Match

The API provides an ETag for the sites array. In case the ETag matches the given value, a 304 Not Modified is delivered together with an empty response body.

Capability

The app registers a capability, so clients can check that before making the actual OCS request:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ocs>
 ...
 <data>
  <capabilities>
   ...
   <external>
    <v1>
     <element>sites</element>
     <element>device</element>
     <element>groups</element>
     <element>redirect</element>
    </v1>
   </external>
   ...

nextcloud / external