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Nextcloud

Nextcloud is a suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. It can integrate with the Collabora Online and OnlyOffice office suites. It can be hosted in the cloud or on premise and can scale up to millions of users.

The Nextcloud add-on allows you manage your WordPress posts as Nextcloud CSV tables, transforming how you and your team handles WordPress content.

The add-on

Nextcloud files are stored in conventional directory structures, accessible via WebDAV.

WebDav, or Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning, is a collection of HTTP extensions that provides collaboration capabilities to clients directly on an HTTP web server. With the use of a Basic authentication credential and over the WebDav protocol, Nextcloud allow integrations with third parties.

To talk with this API, the add-on implements a custom bridge class based on the generic REST bridge that requires Basic credentials.

A Nextcloud bridge will synchronize your posts with entries in your CSV files. Each field of your table can be mapped to a post field, post meta or taxonomy term.

With Posts Bridge introspection API you’ll be able to inspect spreadsheet fields to easily map each them to your post fields and taxonomies.

The first row of the table is treated as the column names.
Posts Bridge will read the first row of your CSV files looking for column names. If the first row is empty, Posts Bridge will be unable to map tables rows into WordPress posts.

How to use

The first step to use the add-on is to activate it on the add-ons table on the general settings tab.

Screenshot of the addons panel on the general settings tab with the Nextcloud addon activated

Once activated, a new tab will be visible on the settings page. If it’s your first time, it should looks like this:

Nextcloud tab out of the box without bridge configurations.

Bridge set up

A Nextcloud bridge will require the following components:

1. Credential

The Nextcloud supports external collaboration over the WebDav protocol. To solve this API authentication requirement, the add-on requires you to register a Basic type of credential with a user login and password.

Once you have the user login and password, you have to go to Settings > Posts Bridge > HTTP > Authentication and register a new authentication credential.

Select Basic as the authentication schema and put the user login as the Client ID and password as Client secret fields. In addition, the credential will require a unique name to identify it.

Screenshot with an example of a Basic credential registry.

This is an example of a Basic authentication credential. In your case, the client ID and secret should be replaced with your user login credentials.

This type of authentication only supports user login as the Client ID value and will fail if you try to use your user email.

2. Backend

To configure Nextcloud as a backend follow this steps:

  1. Register a new backend with a unique name (Nextcloud, for example)
  2. Set the base URL of your Nextcloud instance as the connection URL
  3. Select the Custom encodingoption as the Encoding Schema and set application/octet-stream as the Content-Type header value.
  4. Select the Basic credential you’ve configured on the previous step

3. Post type

Posts Bridge allows you to bridge any registered post type from your WordPress site. If you’ve not registered it yet, you can register it with Posts Bridge. Go to the CPTs tab and create a new custom post type. The registration form will inherit the registration defaults, but you can modify its values at any time. The only required fields are Name, Label and Singular label.

4. Bridge

The add-on’s bridge is an extension of the generic REST bridge with some predefined defaults. Like the REST bridge, the addon’s bridge requires a post type, a foreign key, a backend. In addition to these standard fields, this kind of bridge will require, instead of an endpoint, the filepath to your CSV file, something like this: /Documents/contacts.csv.

The endpoint file path should be an absolute path starting from your Nextcloud user’s root directory.

Troubleshooting

To troubleshooting your bridges you can use the plugin’s debug console from the General Settings page. Enable the debug mode and submit a sample form response to see what’s going on under the hood. Take a look to our tutorial about how to use the debug console.

Common issues

  1. Authentication failures
    • Verify your user credentials
    • Confirm the backend URL
  2. Missing data
    • Verify column names
    • Check field mapping