retog / solid-utils

Utilities for solid apps

solid-utils

A library with utilities to write Solid apps.

Requirements

• rdflib.js
• SolidAuthClient, for convenience this is available in this repository at lib/solid-auth-client-bundle.js.

Usage

Login

Initiate login with

SolidUtils.login()

This requires a popup.html file located at ./popup.html relative to the invoking app. See https://github.com/solid/solid-auth-client#building-the-popup on how to generate such a file.

The method returns a promise with the result of the login process.

Note: The SolidUtils.fetch() and SolidUtils.rdfFetch() will initiate the login process when needed. So you may not need to explicitely invoke SolidUtils.login().

You can set a function executed after successful login as follows:

SolidUtils.postLoginAction = function(loginResult) {
    //do something useful
    return loginResult;
}; 

This function is executed after each successful login, independently if login() is invoked explicitely or if the login process was initiated by a fetch-operation. Such a function is typically used to keep an area displaying information about the current user up to date.

Fetching data

The SolidUtils.fetch() method is a replacement for the standard fetch method that takes care of sending the authorization tokens and initiating the login process when needed.

The SolidUtils.rdfFetch() method will parse an RDF response and provide and add a property graph to the response object.

Example usage:

SolidAuthClient.currentSession().then(function (session) {
    if (session) {
        var user = $rdf.sym(session.webId);
        SolidUtils.rdfFetch(session.webId).then(function (response) {
            var name = response.graph.any(user, SolidUtils.vocab.foaf('name'));
            console.log("Hello "+name);
        }
    }
}       

Working with LDPCs

LDPCs is the Linked Data Platform equivalent of folders.

Create an LDPC with SolidUtils.createLdpc(base, name), if your not sure if the LDPC you need already exist, or when you want to create parent LDPCs as well use SolidUtils.createPath(base, path), basemust point to an existing LDPC, but path can contain slashes expressing a hierarchy (e.g. path/to/my/new/ldpc.

Example usage:

//returns a promise for the LDPC where we publish our data
function appDataDir() {
    return SolidUtils.getStorageRootContainer().then(function (root) {
                return SolidUtils.createPath(root.value + "public","where/my/app/publishes/data");
    }
}