FDC3 for Web Browsers Discussion group 21st Decemeber 2023

[kriswest]

Group overview

Group convened to discuss how to enable FDC3 use in a web browser, without the use of a browser extension (such as fdc3-desktop-agent or a container).

Issue: #896
Mailing list discussion: https://groups.google.com/a/finos.org/g/fdc3/c/jCvlLjokBLs

In a recent email on the FDC3 mailing list, @kriswest wrote:

... I also want to add that there is clearly significant interest in the community in enabling FDC3 use on the web. There is a strong use case in that it would enable better onboarding journeys with less drop-off (where you use an app on the web with others before adopting a desktop container or similar).

and:

But there are also additional challenges such as how to make the API available reliably without importing a proprietary module from a particular vendor into every app, how to deal with more than one implementation of API/Desktop Agent in the browser at once, how to do this reliably and securely within the browser sandbox etc.. Work needs to be done in the Standard to solve these issues and to make web browser use possible in a future FDC3 Standard version - which I believe is possible (and likely to involve using a vendor-agnostic FDC3 NPM module to detect and connect to API implementation(s)). However, we're going to need to do that work to enable the aforementioned API implementations to be compliant and if we fail to hold the line now on compliance with the current version of the FDC3 Standard, that may never happen.

Shared doc with current draft: https://tick42-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/finsemble_datastore_interop_io/EZ0dfTCdRlJCnIF3C_1Oit0B7xK0OOJ0nAvC73dwad53AA?e=x2zlge

Relevant issue tags

Current open issues that relate to the above concepts with the label:

Meeting Date

Thursday 21 Dec 2023 - 11am (US eastern timezone EST) / 4pm (London, GMT)

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Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5 mins)
• Review action items from previous meeting (5 mins)
  • FDC3 for Web Browsers Discussion group 16th November 2023 #1106
• Discuss proposal refinements (20 mins)
  • Persisting DA and instance identity details and assigning consistent instanceIds post navigation/refresh
  • Handling Channel selector UIs
  • Handling Intent resolver UIs
• Review implementation work in finos-labs/fdc3-for-the-web (20 mins)
• Next steps (5 mins)
• AOB & Adjourn (5 mins)

Minutes

• Review action items from previous meeting
  • meeting reviewed and approved (to pass to SWG) the definition of a new event handler API call for channel change events: Add event listeners (for non-context events) to the Desktop Agent API (e.g. for changes to the current User channel) #1136
• The meeting reviewed and approved proposal changes relating to persisting DA type and app & app instance identity details and assigning consistent instanceIds post navigation or refresh of an app window.
  • @novavi noted that whwne window.open is used to clone an app window/open a new one to the same origin, SessionsStorage is copied. Refine the proposal to use WIndowProxy object comparisons to identify when this has occurred and to issue a new instance id.
• The meeting discussed the provision of ChannelSelector and IntentResolver UIs again
  • It was agreed that this is likely the last major decision to make in the proposal before it can be turned into a concrete PR and implementation.
  • @kriswest identified that the easiest solutions are providing an OpenSource implementation for these and powering them through the API calls
    • however, DA vendors will also want to be able to provide these to apps they are managing - often this will be best done in the app window, but may be done outside the window also (e.g. DAs that render apps in iframes can add a selector UI outside the iframe)
    • hence, a more complete solution might be to:
      • allow an app to indicate whether it needs a UI for each case or not (enabling an app or opensource option to solve for this)
      • allow a DA to indicate whether it already solves for the UI outside of the app window/frame
      • allow a DA to indicate URLs that should be loaded into iframes to provide the UI(s)
        • DA provided UI Implementations will need to solve for communication back to the DA (e.g. to get options, indicate what the user chose) themselves, however, input to the Intent Resolver UIs regarding the intent/context raised might be handled through the URL parameter or postMessage - a proposal is needed.
        • The meeting agreed that this proposed solution is best evaluated through a POC implementation, which should be the next step.
      • There was some discussion at the end of the meeting about being able to open windows and the need for a connection to a user gesture (the association to a user gesture doesn't carry over cross-domain postMessages, but does same domain ones). This is likely a problem for API calls like fdc3.open where, after communicating with the DA it is unable to open the requested window... We may not need to worry about this as some existing implementations just ask for permission to open windows.

Action Items

• @kriswest Add recommendation to the proposal that apps use BOTH instanceUuic and WindowProxy object comparisons when assigning a previously used instanceId as there are cases where SessionStorage is cloned when using window.open to opena new window. If the WIndowProxy Objects are not equal assign a new isntanceId.
• @kriswest Draft a proposed solution for Channel and Intent Resolver UI handling based on the meeting discussion for later review.
• @kriswest Arrange next meeting agenda to focus on POC implementation

Untracked attendees

Full name	Affiliation	GitHub username

[novavi]

Derek Novavi / S&P Global

[robmoffat]

Rob Moffat / FINOS 👾

[hughtroeger]

Hugh Troeger / FactSet

[kriswest]

Kris West / interop.io 🚀

[smocarski]

Steven Mocarski / OpenFin

[kruplm]

Maria Krupl / Morgan Stanley