pellaeon / fengyuan Goto Github PK

Problem

We'd like some parts of the frontend dynamic and overridable, such as the sidebar previewer in Files app, the Files app itself should support showing basic file information like ctime and mtime, but it should leave advanced previewing to pluggable (and possibly third-party) plugins (implemented as a Django app). For example, to preview a JPEG file, user can install a "Photos" plugin, the plugin will override the previewer component, and display information specific to that file type, such as EXIF information.

Technical difficulty

Components in Vue must be built together if using .vue source files format. And there's no way to inherit or override code externally.

Solution 1: iframe and dynamic table

Sidebar will be in 2 parts: an iframe and a table. The iframe's URL will be static, some file metadata are passed as GET params, apps can override the view function to show custom content, such as for pictures the iframe can be an <img> and for sounds it can be <audio>. The table is used for text-based metadata, such as EXIF, plugins can simply respond with a JSON and Files app renders that into table cells.

Solution 2: AJAX-loaded template string

Vue component initialization allows template from string, which we can obtain via an out-of-band AJAX call, and allow plugins to override that string.
This is dirty.

Solution 3: x/template loaded template

Improved from sol2, template can be loaded from Django-rendered x/template element. Slightly better, still dirty. Related