web: Added a README with a description of the applications' "mental model," essentially an architectural description.
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Ken Sternberg
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This is the default UI for the authentik server. The documentation is going to be a little sparse
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for awhile, but at least let's get started.
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# The Theory of the authentik UI
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In Peter Naur's 1985 essay [Programming as Theory
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Building](https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf), programming is described as creating a mental
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model of how a program *should* run, then writing the code to test if the program *can* run that
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way.
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The mental model for the authentik UI is straightforward. There are five "applications" within the
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UI, each with its own base URL, router, and responsibilities, and each application needs as many as
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three contexts in which to run.
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The three contexts corresponds to objects in the API's `model` section, so let's use those names.
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- The root `Config`. The root configuration object of the server, containing mostly caching and
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error reporting information. This is misleading, however; the `Config` object contains some user
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information, specifically a list of permissions the current user (or "no user") has.
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- The root `CurrentTenant`. This describes the `Brand` information UIs should use, such as themes,
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logos, favicon, and specific default flows for logging in, logging out, and recovering a user
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password.
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- The current `SessionUser`, the person logged in: username, display name, and various states.
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(Note: the authentik server permits administrators to "impersonate" any other user in order to
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debug their authentikation experience. If impersonation is active, the `user` field reflects that
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user, but it also includes a field, `original`, with the administrator's information.)
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(There is a fourth context object, Version, but its use is limited to displaying version information
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and checking for upgrades. Just be aware that you will see it, but you will probably never interact
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with it.)
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There are five applications. Two (`loading` and `api-browser`) are trivial applications whose
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insides are provided by third-party libraries (Patternfly and Rapidoc, respectively). The other
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three are actual applications. The descriptions below are wholly from the view of the user's
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experience:
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- `Flow`: From a given URL, displays a form that requests information from the user to accomplish a
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task. Some tasks require the user to be logged in, but many (such as logging in itself!)
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obviously do not.
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- `User`: Provides the user with access to the applications they can access, plus a few user
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settings.
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- `Admin`: Provides someone with super-user permissions access to the administrative functions of
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the authentik server.
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**Mental Model**
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- Upon initialization, *every* authentik UI application fetches `Config` and `CurrentTenant`. `User`
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and `Admin` will also attempt to load the `SessionUser`; if there is none, the user is kicked out
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to the `Flow` for logging into authentik itself.
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- `Config`, `CurrentTenant`, and `SessionUser`, are provided by the `@goauthentik/api` application,
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not by the codebase under `./web`. (Where you are now).
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- `Flow`, `User`, and `Admin` are all called `Interfaces` and are found in
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`./web/src/flow/FlowInterface`, `./web/src/user/UserInterface`, `./web/src/admin/AdminInterface`,
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respectively.
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Inside each of these you will find, in a hierarchal order:
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- The context layer described above
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- A theme managing layer
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- The orchestration layer:
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- web socket handler for server-generated events
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- The router
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- Individual routes for each vertical slice and its relationship to other objects:
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Each slice corresponds to an object table on the server, and each slice _usually_ consists of the
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following:
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- A paginated collection display, usually using the `Table` foundation (found in
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`./web/src/elements/Table`)
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- The ability to view an individual object from the collection, which you may be able to:
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- Edit
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- Delete
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- A form for creating a new object
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- Tabs showing that object's relationship to other objects
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- Interactive elements for changing or deleting those relationships, or creating new ones.
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- The ability to create new objects with which to have that relationship, if they're not part of
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the core objects (such as User->MFA authenticator apps, since the latter is not a "core" object
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and has no tab of its own).
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We are still a bit "all over the place" with respect to sub-units and common units; there are
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folders `common`, `elements`, and `components`, and ideally they would be:
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- `common`: non-UI related libraries all of our applications need
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- `elements`: UI elements shared among multiple applications that do not need context
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- `components`: UI elements shared among multiple that use one or more context
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... but at the moment there are some context-sensitive elements, and some UI-related stuff in
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`common`.
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# Comments
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**NOTE:** The comments in this section are for specific changes to this repository that cannot be
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