Trustr is my current project to create a simple certificate management app.
I decided that it is just about the right scope to demonstrate a few things about application development in Horde 5.

I have not made any research if the name is already occupied by some other software. Should any problems arise, please contact me and we will find a good solution. I just wanted to start without losing much time on unrelated issues.

My goals as of now:

– Keep everything neat, testable, fairly decoupled and reusable. The core logic should be exportable to a separate library without much change. There won’t be any class of static shortcut methods pulling stuff out of nowhere. Config and registry are only accessed at select points, never in the deeper layers.
– Provide a CLI using Horde_Cli and Horde_Cli_Application (modeled after the backup tool in horde base git)
– Store to relational database using Horde_Db and Horde_Rdo for abstraction
– Use php openssl extension for certificate actions, but design with future options in mind
– Rely on magic openssl defaults as little as possible
– Use conf.xml / conf.php for any global defaults
– Show how to use the inter-app API (reusable for xml-rpc and json-rpc)
– Showcase an approach to REST danabol ds in Horde (experimental)

The app is intended as a resource provider. The UI is NOT a top priority. However, I am currently toying around with a Flux-like design in some unrelated larger project and I may or may not try some ideas later on.

Initial Steps: Creating the working environment

I set up a new horde development container using the horde tumbleweed image from Open Build Service and a docker compose file from my colleague Florian Frank. Please mind both are WIP and improve-as-needed projects.


git clone https://github.com/FrankFlorian/hordeOnTumbelweed.git
cd hordeOnTumbelweed
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up




This yields a running horde instance on localhost and a database container.
I needed to perform a little manual setup in the web admin ui to get the DB to run and create all default horde schemas.

Next I entered the developer container with a shell
docker exec -it hordeOnTumbelWeed_php_1 bash

There are other ways to work with a container but that’s what I did.

 

Creating a  skeleton app

The container comes with a fairly complete horde git checkout in /srv/git/horde and a clone of the horde git tools in /srv/git/git-tools

A new skeleton app can be created using

horde-git-tools dev new --author "Ralf Lang <lastname@b1-systems.de>" --app-name trustr

The new app needs to be linked to the web directory using

horde-git-tools dev install


Also, a registry entry needs to be created by putting a little file into /srv/git/horde/base/config/registry.d

cat trustr-registry.d.php

<?php
// Copy this example snipped to horde/registry.d
$this->applications['trustr'] = array(
'name' => _('Certificates'),
'provides' => array('certificates')
);

 

This makes the new app show up in the admin menu. To actually use it and make it appear in topbar, you also need to go to /admin/config and create the config file for this app. Even though the settings don’t actually mean anything by now, the file must be present.

I hope to follow up soon with articles on the architecture and sub systems of the little app.