diamondburned (Forefront) ce009a8cba | ||
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services | ||
text | ||
.editorconfig | ||
README.md | ||
cchat.go | ||
cchat_frontend.go | ||
go.mod | ||
go.sum |
README.md
cchat
A set of stabilized interfaces for cchat implementations, joining the backend and frontend together.
Backend
Methods implemented by the backend that have frontend containers as arguments can do IO. Frontends must NOT rely on individual backend caches and should always assume that they will block.
Methods that do not return an error must NOT do any IO to prevent blocking the
main thread. Methods that do return an error may do IO, but they should be
documented per method. ID()
and Name()
must never do any IO.
Note: IO in most cases usually refer to networking, but they should files and anything that could block, such as mutexes or semaphores.
Service
A service is a complete service that's capable of multiple sessions. It has to
implement the Authenticate()
method, which returns an implementation of
Authenticator.
A service can implement SessionRestorer
, which would indicate the frontend
that it can restore past sessions. Sessions are saved using the SessionSaver
interface that Session
can implement.
A service can also implement Configurator
if it has additional configurations.
The current API is a flat key-value map, which can be parsed by the backend
itself into more meaningful data structures. All configurations must be
optional, as frontends may not implement a configurator UI.
Interfaces
- Namer
- SessionRestorer (optional)
- Configurator (optional)
- Icon (optional)
Authenticator
The authenticator interface allows for a multistage initial authentication API
that the backend could use. Multistage is done by calling AuthenticateForm
then Authenticate
again forever until no errors are returned.
Reference Implementation
var s *cchat.Session
var err error
for {
// Pseudo-function to render the form and return the results of those forms
// when the user confirms it.
outputs := renderAuthForm(svc.AuthenticateForm())
s, err = svc.Authenticate(outputs)
if err != nil {
renderError(errors.Wrap(err, "Error while authenticating"))
continue // retry
}
break // success
}
Session
A session is returned after authentication on the service. Session implements
Name()
, which should return the username most of the time. It also implements
UserID()
, which might be used by frontends to check against
MessageAuthor.ID()
and other things.
A session can implement SessionSaver
, which would allow the frontend to save
the session into its keyring at any time. Whether the keyring is completely
secure or not is up to the frontend. For cchat-gtk, that would be using the
Gnome Keyring daemon.
Interfaces
- Identifier
- Namer
- ServerList
- Icon (optional)
- Commander (optional)
- SessionSaver (optional)
Commander
The commander interface allows the backend to implement custom commands to easily extend the API.
Interfaces
- CommandCompleter (optional)
Identifier
The identifier interface forces whatever interface that embeds this one to be uniquely identifiable.
Namer
The namer interface forces whatever interface that embeds it to have an ideally human-friendly name. This is typically a username or a service name.
Configurator
The configurator interface is a way for the frontend to display configuration options that the backend has.
Server
A server is any entity that is usually a channel or a guild.
Interfaces
- Identifier
- Namer
- ServerList and/or ServerMessage
- ServerNickname (optional)
- Icon (optional)
- ServerMessageEditor (optional)
- ServerMessageActioner (optional)
ServerMessage
A server message is an entity that contains messages to be displayed. An example would be channels in Discord and IRC.
Interfaces
- ServerMessageSender (optional): adds message sending capability.
- ServerMessageSendCompleter (optional): adds message completion capability.
Messages
Interfaces
- MessageHeader: the minimum for a proper message.
- MessageCreate or MessageUpdate or MessageDelete
- MessageNonce (optional)
- MessageMentionable (optional)
MessageAuthor
MessageAuthor is the interface that a message author would implement. ID would typically return the user ID, or the username if that's the unique identifier.
Interfaces
- MessageAuthorAvatar (optional)
Frontend
Frontend contains all interfaces that a frontend can or must implement. The backend may call these methods any time from any goroutine. Thus, they should be thread-safe. They should also not block the call by doing so, as backends may call these methods in its own main thread.
It is worth pointing out that frontend container interfaces will not have an error handling API, as frontends can do that themselves. Errors returned by backend methods will be errors from the backend itself and never the frontend errors.
LabelContainer
A label container is a generic abstraction for any container that can hold texts. It's typically used for labels that can update itself, such as usernames.
IconContainer
The icon container is similar to the label container. Refer to above.
ServersContainer
A servers container is any type of view that displays the list of servers. It
should implement a SetServers([]Server)
that the backend could use to call
anytime the server list changes (at all).
Typically, most frontend should implement this interface onto a tree node instead of a tree view, as servers can be infinitely nested.
This interface expects the frontend to handle its own errors.
MessagesContainer
A messages container is a view implementation that displays a list of messages
live. This implements the 3 most common message events: CreateMessage
,
UpdateMessage
and DeleteMessage
. The frontend must handle all 3.
Since this container interface extends a single Server, the frontend is allowed to have multiple views. This is usually done with tabs or splits, but the backend should update them all nonetheless.
SendableMessage
The frontend can make its own send message data implementation to indicate extra capabilities that the backend may want.
An example of this is MessageNonce
, which is similar to IRCv3's labeled
response extension.
The frontend could implement this interface and check if incoming
MessageCreate
events implement the same interface.
Interfaces (only known)
- MessageNonce (optional)