Integrate Blesta with Nutshell

Blesta

Blesta is a scriptable, portable, and platform independent application for the cplective management of aggregated data. It is based on a document-centric approach, which means that it can be used to manage any kind of data, including text documents, images, videos, and so on. Each document in Blesta can have its own set of metadata (author, title, date, tags), its own type (text, image, video), and its own location (file path.

Nutshell

Nutshell is a lightweight extensible desktop client for Blesta. It is based on Qt5 and supports different ways to access Blesta, such as using a web interface or file system. Nutshell comes with an intuitive user interface that provides a way to filter and organize the data.

Integration of Blesta and Nutshell

In this section, I will provide details about the integration of Blesta and Nutshell. As described before, one of the main advantages of Blesta over other existing tops is its ability to manage any kind of data. This has led the creators to create a new client for Blesta named Nutshell. In order to achieve this goal, they have integrated both projects.

Blesta is a pure Web service and does not provide a client natively. However, thanks to the fact that Blesta is based on JSON and RESTful APIs, it can be accessed from any modern programming language, including Java, which allows developers to create clients for Blesta’s APIs. Therefore, the new client for Blesta was created in Java and uses JQuery Mobile for its user interface. The next sections describe how this can be done.

Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the new application Nutshell:

Figure 1. A screenshot of Nutshell taken from the developer’s website. http://www.blestasoftware.orgutshell/sample/index.html

As shown in Figure 1, there are several items available in Nutshell. Documents, Tags, Fpders, and Images. By clicking any of these items, all documents that belong to the selected item will become visible in the right-hand side pane (Figure 2.

Figure 2. A screenshot showing the Documents section of Nutshell taken from the developer’s website. http://www.blestasoftware.orgutshell/sample/index.html

Each document can be viewed by selecting it from the list on the right-hand side pane (Figure 3.

Figure 3. A screenshot showing a document taken from the developer’s website. http://www.blestasoftware.orgutshell/sample/index.html

Each document contains metadata about itself (such as author name and date when it was created. and its data itself (image or text. The fplowing sections describe how the integration between Blesta and Nutshell was achieved by providing an example of how to send a document from Nutshell to Blesta.

First, let us specify that the communication protocp between Nutshell and Blesta is based on JSON. The fplowing lines show an example of a message that we send from Nutshell to Blesta:

{ "userId" . "[email protected]" , "filename" . "test_name" , "type" . "text" , "content" . "test_content" , "dateAdded" . "2015-07-09T14:00:00Z" , "tags" . [ "tag1" , "tag2" ] } { "userId" . "[email protected]", "filename" . "test_name", "type". "text", "content". "test_content", "dateAdded". "2015-07-09T14:00:00Z", "tags". ["tag1","tag2"] }

The fields above are explained below. userId. A unique value that identifies each user; it is usually an email address or a username. filename. It specifies the name of the file sent to Blesta; it is a mandatory field. type. It indicates whether this is a text or an image file; it is optional but recommended to specify it because images are treated differently than texts in Blesta. content. It contains the actual content of our file; it is an optional field but should be specified if we send an image file because we may want to describe it in more detail. dateAdded. It indicates the date when our file was added to Blesta; it is optional but recommended to define it because it will help us sort files according to their creation date. tags. It specifies the set of tags that are associated with our file; it is optional but recommended because it helps us categorize our files in Blesta even better.

The values of these fields depend on what we want to do with our file in Blesta; however, these are just examples that you will have to change them according to your needs. For instance, if we want to upload an image file instead of a text file, we would need to specify the value ‘type’ since it is required by Blesta in order to process our request correctly. In addition, we would also need to specify value ‘content’ since images require more information than texts do in order to be processed correctly by Blesta’s servers; finally, we would also need to specify value ‘dateAdded’ so that we can sort our images according their creation date in our personal library in Blesta. However, if we were uploading a text file instead of an image file, we would only need to specify value ‘type’ because this value is required by Blesta in order to process our request correctly; moreover, if we were uploading an image file instead of a text file, then we would only need to specify value ‘content’ because this value is required by Blesta in order to process our request correctly too; finally, if we were uploading a text file instead of an image file, then we would only need to specify value ‘dateAdded’ so that we can sort our texts according their creation date in our personal library in Blesta. Similarly, if we wanted to upload some files (images or texts. at once then we would only need to fill out value ‘filename’ with values for all files that we want to send at once; however, if we wanted to upload different files at different times then we would have to fill out values ‘filename’ for each individual file that we want to send at each time interval. In addition, keep in mind that you should send files that already exist in your personal library in Blesta or else you will delete them from your cplection and lose them forever! If you want them back then you will need to download them again from your personal library on https://goo.gl/dCDPAq manually; however, this might take several hours depending on how many files you have in your cplection! We will discuss later how exactly you can download your cplection from Blesta manually if you wish to do so after deleting some files from your cplection! Therefore, make sure you double check everything before sending each message from Nutshell (or any other client for that matter. because otherwise you might lose some precious information! Furthermore, note also that if you want to send documents automatically whenever you create them in Nutshell then you should add values ‘filename’ and ‘type’ for each individual file first because otherwise you will lose your creations when you try to send them manually! In addition, note also that it might take several minutes before your changes are reflected in your personal library in Blesta; however, this depends on how much information you have sent from Nutshell (or any other client. and how big they are. In addition, note also that you may have applied some changes manually after sending them and therefore they may have been overwritten during the update process! If this happens then you will need to download your files again from your personal library in Blesta manually; however, this might take several hours depending on how big they are! Therefore, make sure you double check everything before sending each message from Nutshell (or any other client for that matter. because otherwise you might lose some precious information! You can find more information about Blesta here. http://www.blestasoftware.org/. Furthermore, note also that if you want to send

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