Integration with

bob2

I am a web developer, new to Flarum.

I am working on a web app where users can discuss a document (see the prototype at http://www.utopiaedit.com; I am in the process of simplifying the UX and planning for version 1). The UI looks like this:
-- a main area shows the document,
-- in other areas/windows/tabs, users can create topics to discuss parts of the document.

Does it sound feasible with Flarum?

clarkwinkelmann

I've not seen any prototype where a Flarum instance/discussion in embedded inside another website yet.

You might need some work to embed the GUI. On the other hands a lot of things go through the API, so it should work. You could even build a Flarum client that fits in your design, while using Flargow API in the background. Just ideas ?

bob2

Thanks @clarkwinkelmann.
Using only a server-side API implies a lot of work re-implementing and maintaining client-side features.
From what I gathered here and there:
- Flarum has no client-side API (this would have been the best for me, but no other BB solution has one),
- the iframe embedding feature is still experimental (see https://discuss.flarum.org/d/2317-how-to-use-flarum-ext-embed).

luceos

bob2 the most beautiful solution would be to use Flarum and create an extension that handles the collaborative writing part. You'd then have to mutate the page to add the document and your logic.

However, this will be a lot of code to write and Flarum is not stable (with backward breaking changes to come), meaning you'd probably have to refactor a lot halfway through..

bob2

Thanks @luceos, this sounds a lot like what I wanted to hear.
Is the planned client-side architecture powerful enough to allow the kind of heavy page mutation we are talking about here? Is there any doc, white papers or roadmap about this?

luceos

bob2 depending on how much time you have and can invest on getting to understand Flarum and writing the extension(s) (and possibly quite some dependencies) you should be able to get the extension done before stable. The next imminent release is beta 7 which is not yet completely backward breaking.

As to being able to work with page mutations.. If you are able to write the extension properly yes, most of what you do is logic in the frontend/js framework side. Flarum should be able to handle it properly although it has not yet been properly tuned for mass traffic. In the end the core team and community are open to assist with any feedback you have, even though implementation of fixes might need to wait for any upcoming release.

bob2

luceos Is there existing code I could see that performs heavy page mutation? (or even better: page composition based on web components)

luceos

bob2 I haven't seen any extension that comes close to what you propose. Nevertheless Flarum is mithril based and heavily relies on API driven logic. It should be possible..