MWS -- May be Used for a Community Plugin Server

oeyoews · October 28, 2024, 11:47am

I remember there was a somewhat in-depth discussion a few years ago, seemingly on GitHub, but I can’t find it now. However, it seems that @jeremyruston main focus was not here but rather on MWS.

oeyoews · October 28, 2024, 11:55am

github.com/TiddlyWiki/TiddlyWiki5

Introduce built-in plugin library

TiddlyWiki:master ← TiddlyWiki:built-in-library

opened 09:34AM - 10 Dec 22 UTC

Jermolene

+314 -0

# Introduction TiddlyWiki v.5.2.4 includes a new facility to use TiddlyWiki …itself to host an instance of the plugin library server - see #6588. It is done by combining the existing commands used to build the plugin library with the built-in file server component of TW. This PR goes further by starting to explore a native, deeply integrated implementation of the plugin library within the core. The idea is to add new HTTP routes for accessing the plugin library that is already built-in to every Node.js installation of TiddlyWiki. # Goals The ultimate motivation is to be able to host the TiddlyWiki Community Library as an instance of TiddlyWiki running under Node.js in the cloud, offering the kind of functionality that users expect from app stores: * Voting and reviews * Screenshots * Direct submission of items to the library from within TiddlyWiki * Scalability to many thousands of library items One of the advantages of using TiddlyWiki to host the library is that any user will be able to readily spin up their own mirror of the library for use offline or behind a firewall. # Performance and Scalability I believe that with some thoughtful design choices we can get the performance levels required to support our user community. There is no reason why TiddlyWiki shouldn't be as performant at basic web serving as any other state-of-the-art Node.js application. In particular, a careful URL design that permits aggressive caching by a proxy server (eg Cloudflare) should let us offer decent uptime guarantees for read-only functionality. # Progress ## Minimal Functional Version Zero The first milestone is to be able to host an instance of the plugin library in the cloud, and have users be able to access it to download plugins. * [x] New API route to retrieve library HTML server (this is the "proxy server" that TiddlyWiki in the browser runs in an iframe communicating via window.postMessage()) * [x] New API route to retrieve library metadata * [x] New API route to retrieve library item * [x] New $:/tags/PluginLibrary tiddler to point TiddlyWiki in the browser at the new server * [ ] Mechanism for accessing the library from TiddlyWiki server instances running under Node.js * [ ] Mechanism for lazy loading plugin metadata from the server * [ ] Refactor existing "savelibrarytiddler" and "makelibrary" commands to use $tw.library There is, clearly, a lot more to do (for example, we'll need some form of authentication before users will be able to directly submit items to the library), but this gives us something functional that we can analyse and use to inform future discussions.

jeremyruston · October 28, 2024, 8:42pm

One of the challenges with setting up a community plugin library is that community features such as votes and reviews are needed. That means user accounts, password resets, and similar infrastructure.

That is exactly the same infrastructure that is needed within MWS. I don’t want to build the same thing twice. So the plan is that MWS will be able to act as a plugin server, and an instance of MWS will become the community plugin library.