Dashboard

The dashboard app aims to provide the user with a general overview of their Nextcloud and shows information that is currently important.

App developers can integrate into the dashboard app and provide their own widgets.

Register a dashboard widget

A dashboard widget is represented by a class implementing the OCP\Dashboard\IWidget interface. This class will be instantiated whenever the dashboard is loaded. Any bootstrap code that is needed for the widget can be implemented inside of the load method and will be called when the dashboard is loaded.

<?php

namespace OCA\MyApp\Dashboard;

use OCP\Dashboard\IWidget;
use OCP\IInitialStateService;
use OCP\IL10N;
use OCP\IURLGenerator;
use OCP\IUserSession;

class MyAppWidget implements IWidget {

    public function __construct(
        IInitialStateService $initialStateService,
        IL10N $l10n,
        IURLGenerator $urlGenerator
    ) {
        $this->initialStateService = $initialStateService;
        $this->l10n = $l10n;
        $this->urlGenerator = $urlGenerator;
    }

    /**
     * @return string Unique id that identifies the widget, e.g. the app id
     * @since 20.0.0
     */
    public function getId(): string {
        return 'myappwidgetid';
    }

    /**
     * @return string User facing title of the widget
     * @since 20.0.0
     */
    public function getTitle(): string {
        return $this->l10n->t('My app');
    }

    /**
     * @return int Initial order for widget sorting
     *   in the range of 10-100, 0-9 are reserved for shipped apps
     * @since 20.0.0
     */
    public function getOrder(): int {
        return 0;
    }

    /**
     * @return string css class that displays an icon next to the widget title
     * @since 20.0.0
     */
    public function getIconClass(): string {
        return 'icon-class';
    }

    /**
     * @return string|null The absolute url to the apps own view
     * @since 20.0.0
     */
    public function getUrl(): ?string {
        return $this->urlGenerator->linkToRouteAbsolute('myapp.view.index');
    }

    /**
     * Execute widget bootstrap code like loading scripts and providing initial state
     */
    public function load(): void {
        $this->initialStateService->provideInitialState('myapp', 'myData', []);
        \OCP\Util::addScript('myapp', 'dashboard');
    }
}

The MyAppWidget class needs to be registered during the app bootstrap.

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace OCA\MyApp\AppInfo;

use OCP\AppFramework\App;
use OCP\AppFramework\Bootstrap\IBootContext;
use OCP\AppFramework\Bootstrap\IBootstrap;
use OCP\AppFramework\Bootstrap\IRegistrationContext;
use OCA\MyApp\Dashboard\MyAppWidget;

class Application extends App implements IBootstrap {

    public const APP_ID = 'myapp';

    public function __construct(array $urlParams = []) {
        parent::__construct(self::APP_ID, $urlParams);
    }

    public function register(IRegistrationContext $context): void {
        $context->registerDashboardWidget(MyAppWidget::class);
    }

    public function boot(IBootContext $context): void {
    }
}

For compatibility reasons the widget registration can also be performed by listening to the OCP\Dashboard\RegisterWidgetEvent for apps that still need to support older versions where the new app boostrap flow is not available, however this method is deprecated and will be removed once Nextcloud 19 is EOL.

Provide a user interface

The user interface can be registered through the public OCA.Dashboard.register JavaScript method. The first parameter represents the widget id that has already been specified in the IWidget implementation. The callback parameter will be called to render the widget in the frontend. The user interface can be added to the provided DOM element el.

The following example shows how a Vue.js component could be used to render the widget user interface, however this approach works for any other framework as well as plain JavaScript:

import Dashboard from './components/Dashboard.vue'

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    OCA.Dashboard.register('myappwidgetid', (el) => {
        const View = Vue.extend(Dashboard)
        const vm = new View({
            propsData: {},
            store,
        }).$mount(el)
    })
})

Dashboard API for clients

Implement the API

If you want your widget content to be accessible with the dashboard API for Nextcloud clients, it must implement the OCP\Dashboard\IAPIWidget interface rather than OCP\Dashboard\IWidget. This interface contains an extra getItems method which returns an array of OCP\DashboardModel\WidgetItem objects.

/**
* @inheritDoc
*/
public function getItems(string $userId, ?string $since = null, int $limit = 7): array {
    return $this->myService->getWidgetItems($userId, $since, $limit);
}

OCP\DashboardModel\WidgetItem contains the item information. Its constructor is:

public function __construct(string $title = '',
                            string $subtitle = '',
                            string $link = '',
                            string $iconUrl = '',
                            string $sinceId = '');

• title: The main widget text content

• subtitle: The secondary text content

• link: A link to the target resource

• iconUrl: URL to a square icon (svg or jpg/png of at least 44x44px)

• sinceId: Item ID or timestamp. The client will then send the latest known sinceId in next dashboard API request.

Use the API

From the client point of view, the dashboard widget items can then be obtained with this kind of request:

curl -u user:passwd http://my.nc/ocs/v2.php/apps/dashboard/api/v1/widget-items \
    -H Content-Type:application/json \
    -X GET \
    -d '{"sinceIds":{"myappwidgetid":"2021-03-22T15:01:10Z","my_other_appwidgetid":"333"}}'

If your client periodically gets widget items content with this API, include the latest sinceId for each widget to avoid getting the items you already have.