feat(templates): the user can configure a url and ref to fetch templates from

[vfried]

Addresses #561

I created the branch 'test-branch-manifests' inside our templates project for testing reasons.

In case there is no branch and url configured it fails. Specifications say that default should be master but if there is no URL it will fail anyway unless we want to set the url from our templates project as default along with master.

I had to modify also my public/config.json to make it work, i'm not sure something is missing in the configuration I made. My config file looks like this now (i put it here because is an untracked file):

{
"BASE_URL": "https://virginia.dev.renku.ch",
"GATEWAY_URL": "https://virginia.dev.renku.ch/api",
"WELCOME_PAGE": "IyMgV2VsY29tZSB0byBSZW5rdSB0aHJvdWdoIHRlbGVwcmVzZW5jZQpTb21lIGRlcGxveW1lbnQtc3BlY2lmaWMgaW5mb3JtYXRpb24gd2lsbCBiZSByZWFkIGZyb20gdGhlIHlvdXIgdmFsdWVzLnlhbWwgZmlsZSBhbmQgYmUgZGlzcGxheWVkIGFzIG1hcmtkb3duIGZpbGUuCg==",
"RENKU_VERSION": "latest",
"RENKU_TEMPLATES_URL": "https://github.com/repos/SwissDataScienceCenter/renku-project-template",
"RENKU_TEMPLATES_REF": "test-branch-manifests"
}

[rokroskar]

why use the api.github.com URL instead of just github.com?

[vfried]

why use the api.github.com URL instead of just github.com?

Because we are calling the github api, otherwise it fails. Unless we add the "api." string part ourselves.

From github api documentation:

[rokroskar]

I think it would make more sense for whoever is deploying the chart to just put the URL of the repo - it's not that you usually put API URLs in configuration files.

[vfried]

I think it would make more sense for whoever is deploying the chart to just put the URL of the repo - it's not that you usually put API URLs in configuration files.

True, I will do the change so they only put the repo url.

[vfried]

I think it would make more sense for whoever is deploying the chart to just put the URL of the repo - it's not that you usually put API URLs in configuration files.

Done, now the url should be https://github.com/repos/SwissDataScienceCenter/renku-project-template or similar

[rokroskar]

should be just https://github.com/SwissDataScienceCenter/renku-project-template - without the repos in the middle

[vfried]

should be just https://github.com/SwissDataScienceCenter/renku-project-template - without the repos in the middle

True, I changed it so now it works without the "/repo" part. It will work now assuming that the users put the proper URL.

[lorenzo-cavazzi]

It works for me.
I have just a suggestion: I noted you invoke fetchJson(${<url>}/git/trees/${<template>}) multiple times. It may be a good idea to create a single function and invoke it whenever needed.

[lorenzo-cavazzi]

fetchJson(${<url>}/git/trees/${<template>}) --> function

[vfried]

I'm not sure about this. If i make a function to call the fetchJson function it will end up looking almost the same, and the exact same case only happens twice since the third case it's with the tree sha and it adds the ?recursive=1 at the end.

[lorenzo-cavazzi]

I thought it could make sense to have it only in one place so it's easier to understand that they are doing the same thing. The ?recursive=1 could easily be a parameter. Something like this

function getGitTrees(apiUrl, templateUrl, recursive=false) {
  let url = `${apiUrl}/git/trees/${templateUrl}`;
  if (recursive)
    url += "?recursive=1";
  return fetchJson(url);
}

Btw I am going to accept the PR as it is, feel free to use the function or not, it's not a big difference 🙂

[lorenzo-cavazzi]

fetchJson(${<url>}/git/trees/${<template>}) --> function

[lorenzo-cavazzi]

fetchJson(${<url>}/git/trees/${<template>}) --> function

[rokroskar]

if RENKU_VERSION is not used anywhere anymore, please remove it from the configuration files and charts