@crate.io/crate-gc-admin

CrateDB Grand Central Admin

This is an administration interface for CrateDB, that aims to be a direct replacement for the original crate-admin (a.k.a. Admin UI).

Architectural Design Choices

GC Admin is open source and will always be open source (Apache 2.0).

GC Admin aims to be embedded within a CrateDB database, as the original crate-admin is. However, the project can also be run standalone, and configured to access CrateDB using Cross-Origin requests.

GC Admin is pure TypeScript/React that runs in a browser (no backend code).

GC Admin exposes a React component library, where components can be re-used in other React applications (i.e. they are used in CrateDB Cloud).

GC Admin has a consistent UX with CrateDB Cloud.

Authentication

GC Admin authenticates to CrateDB using standard HTTP Basic Auth.

Enterprise Features

GC Admin includes certain enterprise features, which require a non-open-source, paid-for application called Grand Central to function. When Grand Central is not present, the admin UI works, but certain features/tabs are inaccessible. Grand Central is always accessed via HTTP(S) Cross-Origin requests (the URL is configurable).

GC Admin authenticates to Grand Central via a JWT token, which must be obtained from CrateDB Cloud.

Publish a newer version

To publish a new version of the crate-gc-admin on NPM you need to

1. be part of @crate.io organization on npm
2. run yarn publish and type the new version number
3. push package.json file (version update)

This process can also be automated with a GitHub action.

Using @crate.io/crate-ui-components as a local library

Sometimes you need to be able to develop using the local version instead of using a version published on npm.

To be able to do this you need to have cloned the repositories in a structure like this:

your-work-directory/
├── ...
├── crate-gc-admin/          # Crate GC Admin
├── crate-ui-components/     # Crate UI Components Library
├── ...

Then you need to follow these steps:

1. In the crate-ui-components run yarn link-local
2. In crate-gc-admin run yarn link-local-lib

In crate-gc-admin package.json you should see this under dependencies:

    ...
    "dependencies": {
        ...,
        "@crate.io/crate-ui-components": "link:../crate-ui-components",
        ...
    },
    ...

This means that crate-gc-admin is using the local build of the crate-ui-components library, instead of the one on NPM registry.

Everytime you are updating some components in crate-ui-components library, you have to:

1. Run yarn build of the crate-ui-components library
2. Hit a refresh in crate-gc-admin browser page (there is no hot-reload)

When you have finished local development you have to:

1. Run yarn unlink-local-lib in crate-gc-admin. Pay attention that this is installing the latest version of the crate-ui-components published on NPM, so check the version.
2. Run yarn unlink-local in crate-ui-components.