assets_dir: Ignored in config.yml

[JoshuaPettus]

Hi here are the specs of the server I'm using Ubuntu 2004 Nginx 1.21.1 PHP 8.0.9 picocms 2.1.4

I was originally using the nextcloud plugin version of pico cms but the additional restrictions and security wasn't meeting my needs so I setup picocms as a standalone on its own subdomain.

I've installed picocms in /var/www/pico

But the thing is, I want to continue using nextcloud as a frontend for editing the website. I managed to point content_dir at the content directory in my nextcloud files which works nicely. But when I point assets_dir to the assets directory in my files, the images stored there do not display on my site.

here is the configuration

content_dir: /var/server/nextcloud/data/me/files/www/content assets_dir: /var/server/nextcloud/data/me/files/www/assets

A bit of troubleshooting and I've determined that even though assets_dir is set in the config.yml, The /var/www/pico/assets directory is actually still in play. The images show up on my site just fine when I copy the images there.

This is not ideal as I'd like to fully modify the site without having to ssh to the server.

Thank you!

[PhrozenByte]

You must somehow publish your assets dir with your webserver, otherwise a browser won't be able to access the resources. There are various solutions for this:

1. Publish /var/server/nextcloud/data/me/files/www/assets below a virtual directory. If you're using Apache, refer to the Alias directive.
2. Reverse the setup: Don't let Pico access the files below /var/server/nextcloud, but Nextcloud access the files below /var/www/pico: Use Nextcloud's files_external app to include arbitrary local paths (i.e. /var/www/pico/content and /var/www/pico/assets) in your Nextcloud.
3. Symlink /var/www/pico/assets to /var/server/nextcloud/data/me/files/www/assets and unset the assets_dir config. You can even do the same with the content dir.

[mayamcdougall]

Personally, I prefer symlinks approach for simplicity. 😜

Just make sure the original files live in Nextcloud, because it won't play as nice with the symlinks when it's time to sync your files (if I remember correctly). And definitely do the same for your content folder.

I just wanted to chime in and add an explanation of why this was happening to you. Also, I was already thinking about it before @PhrozenByte responded, lol.

As far as I know, Pico doesn't actually use the assets_dir property for anything other than replacing the %assets_url% placeholder. With the content_dir, you're actually pointing Pico at a different location to look for files. These files are processed by Pico to make the pages, but they're not accessible through your web server at /content, so it really didn't matter that they were somewhere else.

Your assets on the other hand are handled directly by the web server and not Pico. The %assets_url% placeholder just provides a convenient substitute for the url, it doesn't actually provide access to the files. So, when you did this, it was either trying to point to /var/www/pico/var/server/nextcloud/data/me/files/www/assets, if you were using %assets_url%, which didn't exist, or just to an empty /var/www/pico/assets if you were typing the URL in your markdown files manually.

[JoshuaPettus]

Ah! That makes total sense! Thanks guys! Unfortunately it seems a little unintuitve. I expected assets_dir would be the same as content_dir in how it works. Perhaps it should be renamed assets_url? or just not be there as it seems to just be a newb trap? What would be a use case for it?

I thought to try the symlink approach before I went down this config file rabbit hole, but I had some weird unexpected result. I did "ln -s /var/server/nextcloud/data/me/files/www/assets /var/www/pico" and the symlink came up broken. Both the source directory and destination are owned by www-data...so beats me. I'll get to the bottom of it. Most likely something stupid...

The other two ideas sound good too, I may give them a try.

[Edit] Yeah the simlink method works just fine. Beats me what I was doing wrong.

[PhrozenByte]

Perhaps it should be renamed assets_url?

There's also a assets_url config :wink: Both assets_dir and assets_url are required config variables, they describe different things, even though Pico can often simply guess them from one another.

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