select current_user

Developing Box framework since 2016

WSL is the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research, part of the ETH Domain

Problem

How to let users interact with our DB?

Solution: Box Framework

Automatically builds a working web application by reading the database structure

Originally developed for researchers
with basic database skills
to manage their own data

Open source ( Apache-2.0 license )

Open source ( Apache-2.0 license )

Principles

• No application code needed
  • Box user == DB user
  • Auto-generated forms for db tables/views
  • Forms definition saved in the DB
  • Web Admin interface
• Take advantage of PostgreSQL Features
  • Row Level Security
  • Triggers
  • Updatable views
  • PostGIS

UI

• Prebuilt widgets
• Nested forms (One-to-many relationship)
• GIS support (with SwissTopo Integration)

Std HTML input

Tablechild widget

EditableTable widget

Excel-like table (Preview)

File widget

Map widget

Features

• REST API
• Data export: XLS, CSV, SHP, Geopackage
• Customizable HTML and PDF reports
• Multi-language support
• SMTP support
• Public forms

Implementation

Simple 3 tier architecture

Presentation Layer: scala.js

Application Layer: scala

Data Layer: PostgreSQL

Implementation

On installation, a new box schema is created in the db with all configuration required by the system

Requirements

• PostrgreSQL 13+
• Java 17+ (i.e. https://adoptium.net/ )

DevOps/Deploy

• Publish docker image
• Gitlab CI workflow (trigger on commit tag)
• Github Actions workflow (trigger on commit tag)

Bootstrap

Download starter package from:
https://github.com/Insubric/box-starter/releases
unzip and run

						
							$ ./install.sh
							$ ./run.sh
						
					

DEMO

Demo database

https://github.com/lerocha/chinook-database