Is there a way to add control panel/admin function to an OrchardCore app outside the CMS?

[MikeAlhayek]

Hello,
I am researching best approach for a new project I am working on. Here are some of the features I am looking to have

1. Multi-tenant Saas Application
2. Modular
3. A backed control panel to manage users, roles, claims and view reports.
4. A way to add items to a menu on the fly. For example, add items to the menu only if the module is available to the tenant.

I can simply use OrchardCore to achieve 1 & 2 very. However, is there more built-in modules/functionality that I can use to add a control panel with the app with a way to add items to the menu similar to the way the CMS app works?

Additionally, is there a module that I can use to manage the users "reset password, change roles, etc..." or the roles/claims a user can have when he/she logs in?

If these common function already exists, I Would appreciate an example of how to setup the control panel with the menu.

[Skrypt]

I think that the SAAS recipe is probably what you are looking for. Though, maybe you need even less features to be enabled by default but the SAAS recipe is definitely a good starting point.

[MikeAlhayek]

@Skrypt I was able to run a saas recipe. Yes this is all the function that I need. However, this force me to use YesSql which I can’t use in this application. Is there a way to implement my own stores so I can use this saas recipe but store the data differently? I think if there is a data abstraction layer available, I can implement my own stores. My project already use UnitOfWork pattern to store data and I like to stick with my UnitOfWork.

[MikeAlhayek]

Here is my UnitOfWork. As you can see I added identity repositories + extend the security features of identity https://github.com/CrestApps/CrestApps.Core/blob/master/CrestApps.Data.Abstraction/IUnitOfWork.cs

[Skrypt]

So, in which context you want to use this UnitOfWork? Because it could be used inside an Orchard Core module. There's nothing preventing you using your own DAL from inside an Orchard Core module. The CMS though requires YesSQL because of the dynamic nature of Content Types in OC. But you could, not use them at all in this case. For the other modules you will need to look if they will get applied in the context of a OC tenant. Please take a look around here on Github for answers given by @jtkech about the tenant feature.

[MikeAlhayek]

@Skrypt, I am able to use the my unit-of-work in my modules with no problem. I was hoping to use my UnitOfWork in place of YesSQL which does not seem possible. I extended the identity security to allow me to prevent the use of the same password in a 12 month period. I also extended the lockout function to have a lockout count for the lockout. For example, if I user got locked out 5 times back to back, I want to lockout the user for 6 months instead of 5 mins "more like a long ban" is there a way to implement the same with the Saas recipe? Also, I would want to add DefaultlocationId to the user profile, how can I add new field to the user?

[Skrypt]

There are some few points here that I understand and that could probably work but I need to make more extensive tests. And I believe that we are now in that period of time where these things will be asked a lot about tenants and how to use them without YesSQL. We probably can't as of now but there's surely either some development that could be done on tenants or things I don't know yet. @jtkech is the one that did the tenants feature I will ask him when I get time or he will answer us here. But, I believe that this is absolutely something that can be done.

[jtkech]

@CrestApps the OrchardCore framework is not coupled to YesSql but OC.Infrastructure is, around half of the modules are not coupled to YesSql but around half of them are coupled. We have some documents managed by an IDocumentStore that can be overridden, but as said by @Skrypt content items management is coupled to YesSql, you would need to rewrite e.g. OC.ContentManagement, OC.Contents and OC.ContentTypes modules, and modules that depend on them.

OC.Infrastructure => OC.Data => YesSql
Module OC.Contents => OC.ContentManagement => OC.Infrastructure

I would want to add DefaultlocationId to the user profile, how can I add new field to the user?

We already have custom user settings that can be used to define different user profiles
But OC.Users => OC.Infrastructure => OC.Data => YesSql

[Skrypt]

Just as a follow up. Last night we tried creating multiple tenants by using a combination of DI and appsettings.json file to see if we could create tenants that use Orchard Core and other that are simple MVC applications. It works partially. We need to test more but it should definitely work as the code is all there. The only thing that doesn't work is when we are adding an Orchard Core tenant with other simple MVC tenants. Need to investigate further to see why it doesn't work. The tenant seems to be created but the / route of the tenant returns a 404 page not found.

So good news, we can create tenants that are not Orchard Core tenants.

Here a solution for those who wants to keep using their MVC custom app would be to create a tenant with the assemblies of this MVC app and a second tenant with Orchard Core accessible with a "urlprefix". This would allow us to migrate and test progressively each modules that could potentially be used standalone inside a MVC app this way.

[hishamco]

@jtkech seems OrchardCore.Data.Abstractions has a dependency on YesSQL which isn't expected :( I though Orchard.Data has a dependency which it's a YesSQL implementation

IMHO Orchard Core as Framework shouldn't depend on YesSQL but Orchard Core CMS could, your thought @sebastienros

[MikeAlhayek]

Yes, that is what I run into. This is the issue I am facing now and is preventing me from using OrchardCore for some apps that I would love to convert to Orchard.

IMHO, the storage for the core function should be flexible and changed as needed. Having the default implementation to be YesSQL is great for most users. But in some cases, "my case", I need to be able to change the default implementation for some of the core function like "users and Identity related tables". In my case, the users and the roles table is used by many micro-services some using apps and some using sql directly. Storing everything into the document table is simply not an option. I feel this would also be true from many enterprise applications too. For content managements, storing everything is YesSQL is fine but the core function should allow for swapping out the implementation.

[TFleury]

I opened an issue (#9245 ) about OrchardCore.Data.Abstractions dependency on YesSql.

[jtkech]

So, one solution in your case would be to implement a module (or from the app with our helpers) this to override our Usertore and RoleStore. The module would need to depend on OC.Users and OC.Roles so that its registrations are done after and override the previous ones, or with an higher order property in the module startup (or from the app with our helpers with an higher order parameter).

[jtkech]

So you can just override IUserStore<IUser>

Currently registered like this

        services.TryAddScoped<UserStore>();
        services.TryAddScoped<IUserStore<IUser>>(sp => sp.GetRequiredService<UserStore>());

[MikeAlhayek]

yes that is the plan. So are you saying that making the UserStore methods are virtual is not a good idea as per the PR request?

[jtkech]

Yes if you just need to override IUserStore, not the others ISomethingStore

    services.AddScoped<IUserStore, YourUserStor>();

[xperiandri]

@CrestApps were you successful in making the admin panel work on top of Orchard Core Framework?

[MikeAlhayek]

@xperiandri unfortunately I did not have the time to do it as the project I was working on was paused!

[TFleury]

This discission is quite old, but I'm also interested by this scenario.
I'm trying to isolate CMS bytes and only keep multi-tenant management and Admin UI.

My idea is also to replace document database (YesSql) with a relational database (EF Core)

Could it be possible to add Saas sample project to share work on this ?

[MikeAlhayek]

@TFleury in theory you should be able to use the core module outside of the CMS. However, I tried it one time and encountered few issue "some have been addresses in v1.5"

If you have the time, you may want attempt that path and see what kind of issues you'll encounter.

[TFleury]

The big part is to remove direct dependencies on YesSql.
I already made 2 PRs to address this (#12826 and #12906)

The next step will probably be the User and Role stores.

[TFleury]

I got it working and I've proposed to include it as a sample. (OrchardCMS/OrchardCore.Samples#35)
But there is still work to allow replacing document database with other providers.

[sambeauvois]

Awesome, thanks for this sample.
I was looking for a way to use orchard core framework parts only and besides the modular system I think there is not a lot of examples.