Updates to the design of appstore

Daphne · November 8, 2023, 9:18am

Dear Nextcloud community,
I’m writing you because some disturbance can be expected in the upcoming days on the app store. We are releasing some major bug-fix and design updates and some things will look off or broken in the upcoming days. We know about the issues and we are working on it!!

All the best, Daphne

edit: please note that this thread is not an invite for feature requests to the app store. This thread is just to warn for potential disturbance in the service. However pull requests for new features would be very welcome and reviewed swiftly, the people on this project are very eager.

devnull · November 8, 2023, 9:30am

Thank you for the information. Is it possible to finally throw out the outdated apps?

Daphne · November 8, 2023, 9:32am

we are considering to add a filtering option on nextcloud version, but this would be a new feature and is out of the scope of this release that this post is about. PR’s would be welcomed and reviewed swiftly, if someone is interested in investing the effort needed.

Cryx · November 8, 2023, 12:46pm

Will there be a search function or might that be possible as a future feature?

Daphne · November 8, 2023, 12:55pm

what do you mean? there is a search bar in the top

Cryx · November 8, 2023, 1:42pm

Oh sorry, didn’t know that the global search function shows apps (even uninstalled ones!) in the results. Cool, thanks!

Daphne · November 8, 2023, 2:53pm

By the way, the design has only changed on the web app store (apps.nextcloud.com), not on the app within your Nextcloud instance. That’s maybe where the confusion came from. But great that you found global search, I can imagine that’s useful to install your apps!

ernolf · November 8, 2023, 5:55pm

There is a builtin function to filter apps by plattform and it works great!

I wrote a command line app store with advanced search functions where I made heavily use of all of these features: Script "nc-apps" - a helpful and more verbose complement to `occ app:list`

search app supported by a certain nextcloud version
list unsupported apps by a certain nextcloud version
search by name-pattern
search by id-pattern
uses its own sqlite3 database
maintain app_install_overwrite array in config/config.php
list with- or withpout pager
list in colour or in formatted markdown table format
filter apstore json-code with predefined json filter code (for advanced coders)
auto update
auto integrity test
etc.

I hope that the api will not be changed to much, I put a lot of work into it

Much luck,
ernolf

just · November 8, 2023, 11:23pm

Tested and search functionality isn’t working for me on new appstore.

Daphne · November 9, 2023, 9:00am

for me it’s working, can you send the steps to reproduce? and are you using the web app store on apps.nextcloud.com?

SysKeeper · November 9, 2023, 12:01pm

You could also try a private window to rule out any caching issue. Had some strange layout issues yesterday that turned out to be a caching issue …

ernolf · November 9, 2023, 2:46pm

OK, so now I did some search tests and the search function is by far not as good as the search results I get with my appstore (nc-apps). Therefore the webfrontend is much faster but what brings me a fast “wrong” or “incomplete” result?

It is still not possible to search for app-id’s by pattern. When I get a result, then it is because the app_id is somehow mentioned in the description.

So when I search for

“text2image_stablediffusion”, I get the right App, but when I search for "fulltextsearch ", it offers me “Nextant” - an outdated app, while this is what I become with my commandline appstore (nc-apps):

:~# nc-apps id=fulltextsearch --supported

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command = "id", app_id = "fulltextsearch", only supported, markdown = false, nopager = true, lang = de
Versions: assumed = 27.1.3, is = 27.1.3.2, min = 11.0.8, php = 8.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================================
   App-Id          files_fulltextsearch
   App-Name        Full text search - Files
   Summary         Index the content of your files
   Categories      search
   App-Version     27.0.1
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/files_fulltextsearch
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/files_fulltextsearch/issues
   Admin-Doc.      https://github.com/nextcloud/files_fulltextsearch/wiki
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      27 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/files_fulltextsearch
   Created         2018-01-08T13:45:46.826389Z
   Last modified   2023-08-01T18:13:11.418671Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          files_fulltextsearch_tesseract
   App-Name        Full text search - Files - Tesseract OCR
   Summary         OCR Some format
   Categories      search
   App-Version     27.0.0
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/files_fulltextsearch_tesseract
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/files_fulltextsearch_tesseract/issues
   Admin-Doc.      https://github.com/nextcloud/files_fulltextsearch_tesseract/wiki
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      26 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/files_fulltextsearch_tesseract
   Created         2018-05-25T11:59:23.941177Z
   Last modified   2023-06-13T11:11:41.288396Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          fulltextsearch
   App-Name        Full text search
   Summary         Core of the full-text search framework for Nextcloud
   Categories      search
   App-Version     27.0.2
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch/issues
   Admin-Doc.      https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch/wiki
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      27 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/fulltextsearch
   Created         2018-01-08T13:45:00.180176Z
   Last modified   2023-09-26T09:45:02.988008Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          fulltextsearch_elasticsearch
   App-Name        Full text search - Elasticsearch Platform
   Summary         Index using ElasticSearch
   Categories      search
   App-Version     27.0.4
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch_elasticsearch
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch_elasticsearch/issues
   Admin-Doc.      https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch_elasticsearch/wiki
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      27 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/fulltextsearch_elasticsearch
   Created         2018-01-08T13:46:20.008606Z
   Last modified   2023-09-29T13:04:58.695378Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aditionally I can filter out all apps that are not supported by the real (or assumed) nextcloud version.

So nc-apps is still a much better tool to query the appstore for apps and their compatibility on various plattforms as the website.

So what I am missing is a github-like search function, e.g.:

“pattern” in:id or in:name or in:description.

Much luck,
ernolf

just · November 9, 2023, 4:34pm

You are right. It was a cache issue for me searching. Resolved after clearing

Daphne · November 9, 2023, 4:36pm

the search functionality has not been touched, so I doubt it has worsened @ernolf , for now I will not consider this a bug. But PR’s to improve things would be warmly welcomed and swiftly reviewed, these efforts are within the scope of my own team and they are eager to get it all polished.

just · November 9, 2023, 9:49pm

It was caching for me. Cleared it out and works fine in browser on desktop and mobile

ernolf · November 9, 2023, 10:43pm

No, I didn’t say that either. I just meant it wasn’t improved

I wrote a shell script that perfects the search process. Many people downloaded it and use it day by day. Unfortunately, I am not skilled in all areas of programming so I am afraid, not to be the right person to promote the project with PR’s.

Much luck,
ernolf

mdw · November 11, 2023, 10:13am

Can you maybe take a look a the search at some point? When i search for “groupfolders”, it only brings up the Workspace app, not the Group Folders app despite the app key literally being groupfolders.

ernolf · November 11, 2023, 10:48am

The apstore website does not search for app id’s by design nor does the included appstore in the webfrontend of your cloud. Try nc-apps as search supplement to the appstore. It’s the only tool that supports searching by app-id:

~# nc-apps id=groupfolders version=28
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command = "id", app_id = "groupfolders", markdown = false, nopager = true, lang = de
Versions: assumed = 28.0.0, is = 27.1.3.2, min = 11.0.8, php = 8.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================================
   App-Id          groupfolders
   App-Name        Group folders
   Summary         Admin configured folders shared with everyone in a group
   Categories      files
   App-Version     16.0.0
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/groupfolders
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/groupfolders/issues
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      28 / 28
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, enabled
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/groupfolders
   Created         2017-04-26T17:44:45.415001Z
   Last modified   2023-11-07T14:46:00.158013Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

or in pre formatted markdown table format:

~# nc-apps id=groupfolders version=28 --markdown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command = "id", app_id = "groupfolders", markdown = true, nopager = true, lang = de
Versions: assumed = 28.0.0, is = 27.1.3.2, min = 11.0.8, php = 8.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

================================================================================


App-Id	groupfolders
App-Name	Group folders
Summary	Admin configured folders shared with everyone in a group
Categories	files
App-Version	16.0.0
Repository	GitHub - nextcloud/groupfolders: 📁👩‍👩‍👧‍👦 Admin-configured folders shared by everyone in a group. https://github.com/nextcloud-releases/groupfolders
Issue-Tracker	Issues · nextcloud/groupfolders · GitHub
PHP min-intsize	32
NC min/max	28 / 28
	Not-shipped (not included) App available in appstore
Appstore-link	https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/groupfolders
Created	2017-04-26T17:44:45.415001Z
Last modified	2023-11-07T14:46:00.158013Z

As you can see, I asked for the groupfolders version supported by nextcloud 28
This is the searchresult of id’s containing “group” supported by nextcloud 26:

~# nc-apps id=group version=26
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
command = "id", app_id = "group", markdown = false, nopager = true, lang = de
Versions: assumed = 26.0.8, is = 27.1.3.2, min = 11.0.8, php = 8.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================================
   App-Id          auto_groups
   App-Name        Auto Groups
   Summary         Automatically adds all users to one or multiple specified groups.
   Categories      tools
   App-Version     1.5.2
   Repository      https://github.com/stjosh/auto_groups
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/stjosh/auto_groups/issues
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      21 / 28
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/auto_groups
   Created         2020-04-20T04:39:50.802079Z
   Last modified   2023-06-24T11:38:50.383248Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          group_default_quota
   App-Name        Default group quota
   Summary         Set default user quotas for group members
   Categories      files
   App-Version     0.1.7
   Repository      https://github.com/icewind1991/group_default_quota
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/icewind1991/group_default_quota/issues
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      25 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/group_default_quota
   Created         2021-03-05T16:38:02.706316Z
   Last modified   2023-06-05T15:29:52.947312Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          group_everyone
   App-Name        Everyone Group
   Summary         Adds a virtual "Everyone" group
   Categories      tools
   App-Version     0.1.13
   Repository      https://github.com/icewind1991/group_everyone
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/icewind1991/group_everyone/issues
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      25 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/group_everyone
   Created         2018-08-10T18:33:57.975685Z
   Last modified   2023-06-07T15:04:45.639903Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          groupfolders
   App-Name        Group folders
   Summary         Admin configured folders shared with everyone in a group
   Categories      files
   App-Version     14.0.5
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/groupfolders
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/groupfolders/issues
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      26 / 26
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, enabled
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/groupfolders
   Created         2017-04-26T17:44:45.415001Z
   Last modified   2023-11-07T14:46:00.158013Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   App-Id          groupquota
   App-Name        Group quota
   Summary         Give filesystem quotas to groups
   Categories      files
   App-Version     0.1.11
   Repository      https://github.com/nextcloud/groupquota
   Issue-Tracker   https://github.com/nextcloud/groupquota/issues
   PHP min-intsize 32
   NC min/max      25 / 27
                   Not-shipped (not included) App, available in appstore
   Appstore-link   https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/groupquota
   Created         2019-03-12T17:36:28.959626Z
   Last modified   2023-06-05T14:05:54.668969Z
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

etc.

Much luck,
ernolf

benm · November 11, 2023, 3:49pm

On the topic of search, for months I thought the app store had no search function because the search function looks like the search for your own instance of nextcloud. This is not intuitive, as I would not think to search the nextcloud app store with the same search I would use to search for files on my personal cloud.

FadeFx · November 11, 2023, 4:02pm

In my opinion the web appstore is not of much use, at least foe personal users. It would be cool if one could bind his account on the website to his nextcloud instance(s) and push installs from the webstore to his system instead of having to download the app, move it to the server and install it manually there.