NextCloud integration

[MarekPikula]

In our company we use extensively NextCloud as our cloud service and Rocket.Chat to communicate with each other. Sometimes there is need to share some file on chat and what we do is copy link to cloud and paste in chat, but it isn't pretty solution, as Rocket doesn't know what is behind login-wall.

Ways of integration:

1. Create NextCloud app, so that Rocket is available directly from NextCloud – will be relatively easy, as it can be just iframe as it's done ex. in Collabora app.
2. Auto login. We currently use LDAP for auth, so there is no problem for us in terms of authentication source (it could be done just like in RainLoop webmail app, which has option to automatically login with NextCloud credentials), but I believe that some installations don't involve LDAP, so it would be nice to have support for NextCloud's auth source. Good thing is that NextCloud has some nice APIs, so it will be just matter of GET request and parsing XML, as described here: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/12/developer_manual/client_apis/OCS/index.html
3. WebDAV file sharing integration, to allow for easy file sharing on chat. It could be great integration on its own, not necessarily directly connected to NextCloud, but to WebDAV in general. The way I see it is that Rocket fetches file info with PROPFIND request and generates or fetches thumbnail from WebDAV server. The thumbnail part may be a little bit tricky, but I think that there will be no problem with NextCloud in this matter, as thumbnails can be generated by NextCloud itself and then available via some GET request (just created issue for this: File preview WebDAV API nextcloud/server#6176).
4. NextCloud as Rocket's file storage. At this point we'll already have WebDAV auth support, so it would be just a matter of selecting some shared folder without permission to delete and change.
5. NextCloud as attachment source. It would be nice to be able to browse NextCloud and add files directly from there to Rocket conversation. Could be done by sending file unique URL to chat, the format is: {NextCloud server}/index.php/f/{fileid}, where fileid can be fetched from WebDAV with PROPFIND oc:fileid.
6. NextCloud notifications about Rocket messages. That's not crucial, but would be nice to have as an option. I'm not yet sure how it could be done, but it can definitely be done.

So please tell me what do you think about all of this. To be honest I'm not too much of Node programmer, so I cannot help on the Rocket side, but I have some PHP background so I could write and maintain NextCloud app.

[MarekPikula]

Note that at the moment iframe integration (ie. first point) can be easily achieved with External app (https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/external).

[tiredofit]

I have similar ideas, yet my programming skills both in Ruby and PHP are pitiful at best. One of the features that I found would be useful (and actually what initially brought me to Rocketchat+) was to be able to have it running at all times in the background for the notification support. The Chat/XMPP plugin accomplishes this somehow. Looking forward to seeing what comes of this, although I'll be more of a cheerer on the sidelines.

[MarekPikula]

Well, #404 would be in fact useful as one of ways besides app iframe. Currently there is NextCloud app ojsxc, which provides nice-looking XMPP interface on top of NextCloud interface.

[marbetschar]

Would really love to see an integration between Rocket.Chat und Nextcloud. To start with I would be happy to post notifications from Nextcloud to Rocket.Chat. After this, having Nextcloud as attachment source would be awesome!

[Jorval]

Hey,
We also use Nextcloud and i started a rocketchat server for the IT Department a while ago. unfortunally my colleague's don't use the chat anymore so the server wasn't used much.

Now the Managment likes a similiar setup and i try to revive the rocket.chat and also like to integrate nextcloud as mcuh as possible.

Any step to bring these both awesome tools together will help me argument to invest or even donate to both projects.

I have just small coding skills myself but try to help as much as i can.

[ThomasSteinbach]

Point no. 5 is very interesting for me. Currently attaching files means keeping them twice on the server. It would be ideal, if Rocket.Chat would allow to store/search attachments on/from Nextcloud <3

[tezukzai]

+1 for all of this functionality! NextCloud+RocketChat would be very powerful.

[beankylla]

• 1 for this, would come really handy

[geekgonecrazy]

I believe some nextcloud integration is proposed as a gsoc project. But long term if we were to do this, it would be in the forum of a Rocket.Chat App.

[MarekPikula]

For now it is possible to use NextCloud as OAuth2 provider, so that if someone doesn't use some external way of authentication (like LDAP) it can be very useful, as credentials are managed by NextCloud and Rocket.Chat authenticates via OpenID Connect. I didn't test it yet, but configuring OAuth2 is pretty straightforward, so it should work out of the box.
Probably it would be also possible to share some other resources via OAuth2 (like files and so on), but it would require some development on Rocket.Chat side.

[moonwolf-github]

@MarPiRK have you tested this approach? I'm trying to use Nextcloud as Oauth2 provider for rocket.chat and as for now i didn't succeded...

[andreas-bulling]

Additional idea: Similar to the integration available with GoogleCalendar, the Nextcloud calendar could be integrated into Rocket.Chat, e.g. users could create a special room that notifies them about calendar events.