POCZone #3: Portal Application

Management of shared spaces and invocation of apps

I proudly present the first version of the Portal Application for my website POCZone.net!

POC is for Proof of Concept. The website hosts a bunch of experimental note taking applications. I’m currently rewriting it. The main design goal is to have a platform that handles all the common app requirements, so the apps can focus on what’s important. I had a week of home vacation in December 2017 and I made good progress! So here we go!

For the bigger picture, read this always up-to-date index article:

POCZone #0: Rewriting my website for experimental note taking apps - Index

Summary (Platform Concept)

Let me summarize the platform concept. I have a Backend Service which provides all the functionality:

1. Authentication of users.
2. Space management and sharing for each app.
3. JSON data storage inside a space with incremental live updates.

Within an app, I only want to use the data storage service.

But how is the app started?

Enter: The Portal Application

The Portal Application is the User Interface for Authentication and Space management and sharing. It also starts the apps with an integration call in an iframe.

We start at the login screen. You can login, register or login as a demo user.

When logged in, the app shows the space index, which is empty at first. For each app, there is a list of spaces. Spaces can be started or managed. Or you can create a new space. When you have created and shared some spaces, the index looks like this:

This is the current configuration screen:

When the app is started, the top bar remains visible, so you can always log out or return to the index. For each space, the portal application generates a short link from the space ID. This link can be bookmarked. It looks like that: https://poczone.net/#A8H

Explore

Here is the Online Instance of the Portal Application.

The code is be published at GitHub. The portal application is written in plain JavaScript. The code is split into multiple modules, which are bundled with Browserify.

Further reading

Now that the portal is available, of course I want to connect apps with a Client API. Read more about that one here:

POCZone #4: Client API for persistent JSON Data Storage

If you are interested in the progress, stay tuned! The index article will always be updated to reflect the latest state of the development.