Swift Browser

Swift Browser is a web based UI for OpenStack Swift. You can try our demo if you want to see how it looks and behaves.

Deployment

Deployment is simple: if you got this file from a release tarball or zip file, then you simply need to upload all files in this folder to Swift. First create a container on Swift to hold the files and make this container world readable:

$ swift post swift-browser
$ swift post -r '.r:*' swift-browser

Upload all files to the new container:

$ swift upload swift-browser .

Then load the index.html page in your browser. You will be asked for your credentials if needed. After logging in, you will see a container listing. Deployment is now done.

If you cloned the repository you need to install dependencies before you can deploy Swift Browser. These are managed using Bower. You can run Bower via npm:

$ npm install

This will install Bower and other tools needed in the node_modules folder (everything is installed locally). It will then run bower install for you to download AngularJS and other libraries needed.

When the command is done, the app/ folder will be ready for upload. Simply upload it to your Swift installation and load the index.html page in your browser (use the instructions above).

Configuration

You can add a configuration file named config.json to configure the authentication type and URL endpoint. The default is to authenticate using LiteAuth:

{
    "auth": {
        "type": "liteauth",
        "url": "/auth/v1.0"
    }
}

For authentication against Keystone, you should configure Swift Browser like this:

{
    "auth": {
        "type": "keystone",
        "url": "http://localhost:5000/v2.0/tokens"
    }
}

Same-Origin Restrictions

For Swift Browser to do Keystone authentication, you will need to make sure that the browser can send AJAX requests to Keystone. Typically, Swift will be running on one port number with Keystone running on a different port number. The same-origin restrictions in browsers forbid JavaScript from making AJAX calls between different hosts.

So to make Swift Browser talk to Keystone, you need to either

• Make the two servers run on the same origin as seen from the browser.

  This can be done by installing a proxy infront of both Keystone and Swift. The proxy can then expose Swift under http://example.net/swift and Keystone under http://example.net/keystone. This will allow JavaScript code loaded from /swift to send AJAX requests to /keystone without problem.

• Install and enable a CORS (cross-origin resource sharing) middleware for Keystone.

  CORS is a standard for allowing scripts on one origin domain access resources in another origin. You basically configure Keystone to allow API requests from the origin where Swift is running (or from any origin). Please see this blog post for details.

Testing

For testing purposes, you can try the browser with a simulated Swift backend. Run

$ grunt mock start

to generate app/mock.html and also start the development web server. Loading

http://localhost:8000/app/mock.html

in your browser will now show the mocked test environment. You will be working on an in-memory database which reflects the changes you make until you reload the page. Navigating using the in-page links is okay since that doesn't trigger a full page reload.

Supported Browsers

We support IE 10+ and test with Firefox and Chrome.

Release History

Version 0.2.0: 2014-11-17

This release adds support for copying objects and deleting containers. Furthermore, the JavaScript and CSS files are now concatenated and minified, resulting in a faster load. Issues closed since 0.1.0:

• #176: Fix Bootstrap fonts missing in minified build.
• #164: Run E2E tests on minified JavaScript.
• #163: Test page speed using online tools.
• #157: Use grunt-usemin to concat and minimize assets.
• #155: Use load-grunt-tasks to simplify Gruntfile
• #154: Use grunt-contrib-compress to create release tarball and zip file.
• #120: Look at using a CDN for third-party dependencies.
• #95: Concatenate HTML templates into a single file for production deployment.
• #53: Implement copy operation.
• #37: Add support for deleting containers.
• #20: Look at using ng-annotate.

Version 0.1.0: 2014-11-06

First release with a basic feature set:

• Keystone and LiteAuth authentication.
• Can browse containers and pseudo-directories.
• Can create and delete containers.
• Can edit object content and metadata.
• Can upload and delete objects.

Other Swift File Managers

• Swift Explorer: implemented in Java.
• django-swiftbrowser: implemented in Python using Django.
• swift-ui: implemented in JavaScript using Backbone.js