Etherpad pre-filled pages

[ikke-t]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

In Ansible EDA & Dynatrace escape room we found etherpad good for simple "breakout rooms" feature. But for that to work, we would need to have number of pages pre-generated. Like one instruction page, and 15 team rooms. I'm writing here my findings for later what would it take.

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like to have a task in ansible etherpad role that adds a page with given content. I checked from etherpad docs that it has an API to do this. To add pages we would need to:

1. Add config/secret file and map it to file called APIKEY.txt at root of container:

      Authentication
   
      Authentication works via a token that is sent with each request as a post parameter. There is a single token per Etherpad deployment. This token will be random string, generated by Etherpad at the first start. It will be saved in APIKEY.txt in the root folder of Etherpad. Only Etherpad and the requesting application knows this key. Token management will not be exposed through this API.
   

2. We could then create given pages via ansible http POST as described in the doc. A rough example with curl here:

    #!/bin/bash
   
    # Configuration
    API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
    PAD_NAME="welcomePad"
    ETHERPAD_URL="http://your-etherpad-instance"
   
    # Step 1: Create a new pad
    curl "${ETHERPAD_URL}/api/1/createPad?apikey=${API_KEY}&padID=${PAD_NAME}"
   
    # Step 2: Set the text of the new pad
    curl --data "apikey=${API_KEY}&padID=${PAD_NAME}&text=welcome%20to%20etherpad" "${ETHERPAD_URL}/api/1/setText"
   

Describe alternatives you've considered
currently the lab organizer needs to copy paste several pages at lab start, and modify them according to lab details.

Additional context

[ikke-t]

@tonykay We discussed this at summit.

[ikke-t]

same example in ansible:

---
- name: Create a new pad in Etherpad
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: Create a new pad
      uri:
        url: "http://your-etherpad-instance/api/1/createPad"
        method: GET
        return_content: yes
        status_code: 200
        body_format: json
        headers:
          Content-Type: "application/json"
        params:
          apikey: "YOUR_API_KEY"
          padID: "welcomePad"

    - name: Set the text of the new pad
      uri:
        url: "http://your-etherpad-instance/api/1/setText"
        method: POST
        return_content: yes
        status_code: 200
        body_format: form-urlencoded
        headers:
          Content-Type: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
        body:
          apikey: "YOUR_API_KEY"
          padID: "welcomePad"
          text: "welcome to etherpad"

[ikke-t]

While looking into this, I noticed there is etherpad-lite, which is perhaps a bit newer. And such has kustomize for kube. Perhaps it would make sense to use that: https://github.com/gobengo/etherpad-lite

[ikke-t]

here's role I made for this: https://github.com/ikke-t/etherpads-lb1740

[ikke-t]

Just for backup, here's podman kube yaml that works with apikey. Note the added secret, apikey parameter and auth env variable. The latest etherpad requires that.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: apikey
data:
  APIKEY.txt: aGVwcGE=
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  labels:
    app: etherped-lite-pod
  name: etherped-lite-pod
spec:
  containers:
    - name: etherped-lite
      args: [pnpm, run, prod, --apikey, /api/APIKEY.txt]
      # args: [pnpm, run, prod]
      env:
        - name: DEFAULT_PAD_TEXT
          value: Start editing here...
        - name: DB_CHARSET
          value: utf8mb4
        - name: TERM
          value: xterm
        - name: DB_NAME
          value: etherpad
        - name: DB_PORT
          value: '5432'
        - name: no_proxy
          value: localhost,127.0.0.0/8,::1
        - name: DB_USER
          value: admin
        - name: DB_PASS
          value: admin
        - name: DB_HOST
          value: 127.0.0.1
        - name: ADMIN_PASSWORD
          value: admin
        - name: DB_TYPE
          value: postgres
        - name: NO_PROXY
          value: localhost,127.0.0.0/8,::1
        - name: DISABLE_IP_LOGGING
          value: 'false'
        - name: SOFFICE
          value: 'null'
        - name: TRUST_PROXY
          value: 'true'
        - name: AUTHENTICATION_METHOD
          value: apikey
      image: docker.io/etherpad/etherpad:latest
      ports:
        - containerPort: 9001
          hostPort: 9001
      securityContext:
        runAsGroup: 0
        runAsUser: 0
      stdin: true
      tty: true
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /opt/etherpad-lite/src/plugin_packages
          name: etherped-lite_plugins-pvc
        - mountPath: /opt/etherpad-lite/var
          name: etherped-lite_etherpad-var-pvc
        - name: apikey
          readOnly: true
          mountPath: /api
    - name: etherped-litepostgres
      args: [postgres]
      env:
        - name: PGDATA
          value: /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata
        - name: NO_PROXY
          value: localhost,127.0.0.0/8,::1
        - name: no_proxy
          value: localhost,127.0.0.0/8,::1
        - name: POSTGRES_DB
          value: etherpad
        - name: POSTGRES_PASSWORD
          value: admin
        - name: POSTGRES_USER
          value: admin
        - name: POSTGRES_PORT
          value: '5432'
      image: docker.io/library/postgres:15-alpine
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /var/lib/postgresql/data
          name: etherpad-lite_postgresql-pvc
        - mountPath: /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata
          name: etherped-lite_postgres_data-pvc
  restartPolicy: Always
  volumes:
    - name: etherped-lite_plugins-pvc
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: etherped-lite_plugins
    - name: etherped-lite_etherpad-var-pvc
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: etherped-lite_etherpad-var
    - name: etherpad-lite_postgresql-pvc
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: etherpad-lite_postgresql-pvc
    - name: etherped-lite_postgres_data-pvc
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: etherped-lite_postgres_data
    - name: apikey
      secret:
        secretName: apikey

[tonykay]

@wkulhanek if you have time can you take a look, otherwise I will, but always happy to defer to you on OCP - takes me back to our youth and Adv App Dev :)