Proposals/Cloud Services

The initial idea behind Repository plugin was to upgrade Mahara in a way that Mahara would allow users to connect to their external cloud repository services (e.g. Box.net, Dropbox, SugarSync, Google Docs/Drive, Windows Live SkyDrive, iCloud, etc.) and that tey would be able to include those files in their pages in similar fashion as they include files from local Mahara file repository.

The idea then developed into supporting not only external cloud repository services but also to support adding "content" from other kind of external cloud services (e.g. references from Zotero). At that point plugin was renamed from Repository into Cloud plugin...

After this brief intro, let's look at the spec itself.

Cloud Artefacts

The code for Cloud plugin itself is organized in the following way: every external cloud service (for every user) is represented as cloud artefact.

This artefact hold following information:

• artefacttype, owner, etc. - as every other artefact in Mahara
• title - which is basically the name of external cloud service
• description - which contain all the information to access external cloud service, such as: access token, access token secret, refresh token, etc. (depends on which info external service returns)