Input required from project developer (I am planning on cleaning and improving the code)

[mp035]

Hi @billz ,
I am using raspap-webgui in a project and I will be adding some custom pages (which are irrelevant to the raspap-webgui project). As part of this work I am planning on making the following 2 changes to the code which may be useful to your project:

1. Converting to conventional routing syntax (ie. http://raspberrpi.local/dashboard instead of http://raspberrypi.local?page=dashboard). I have already completed this change, it does not require any external libraries, it just adds a single file to the lighttpd configuration folder. I have added functions to the installer and uninstaller to handle this extra file.
2. Converting the html templates to BladeOne views (https://github.com/EFTEC/BladeOne) for easier maintenance and extension. BladeOne is an ultra-light version of Laravel's blade engine. It only requires a single php file, and does not appear to have any external dependencies. This seems to fit with the current nature of raspap-webgui which doesn't appear to use composer (I assume because that would require yet another dependency on the Pi). This does however introduce a vendor library, which may warrant adding a vendor folder and keeping in mind that the project should probably transition to PSR-4 standard sometime in the (distant?) future.

I wanted to present these two changes to you to see if you want them submitted to your project? I will be doing the work anyway, but you may have good reasons for not including them, so let me know your thoughts.

Kind Regards,
Mark

[billz]

Sounds great, Mark.

Updating the current routing scheme would be a nice improvement. This hasn't changed since the project's inception, for no reason other than historical inertia. If using lighttpd's mod_rewrite (or similar) gives us cleaner URLs I'm all for it.

Re: templating, the renderTemplate() function separates most of the logic from presentation, but there's still a fair bit of PHP in the project templates. One consideration is the gettext() alias _() that's currently used for labels in these files. Do you know how BladeOne handles this? I assume the labels could be set with gettext() and passed as vars.

Until now RaspAP hasn't relied on external PHP dependencies (apart from Parsedown, a markdown parsing class). Certainly not opposed to it, or adding a /vendor library if it's needed and indeed eventually moving to PSR-4.

Give the branch feature/dhcp-eth0 a look. This refactors RaspAP's internal DHCP config handling, with the goal of merging manual user configurations in a predictable way. It mainly touches /includes, but some templates and the installer are updated as well. I plan to merge this and create a 2.6-beta pre-release after a final round of testing. You might do a rebase against your fork to get a scope of potential conflicts, and decide if it makes sense for your project.

Thanks,
BZ

[mp035]

Hi BZ,
All points noted. Blade syntax handles gettext pretty easily using {{ _($varToTranslate) }}. It also allows php code in the template where needed (unlike twig). I'll take a look at the dhcp-eth0 branch and make a call.

[mp035]

Ok, so I have rebased my working branch off of dhcp-eth0. My thinking is that the changes will be kind of major, so it should be easier to handle pull requests to a non-master branch.

[mp035]

Hi @billz ,
After rebasing off of dhcp-eth0 the application no longer works in AP-STA mode. From a fresh raspian image I can get the webgui up and runnnig but as soon as I select Enable Wifi Client Ap Mode and hit save settings, the wifi interface dies, and can not be restarted. I tried manually running the /etc/raspap/hostapd/servicestart.sh script to see what happens, but I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here. The service fails to start, and attached is ac copy of journalctl.

journalctl.txt

Any ideas where to start looking?

Cheers.

[billz]

dhcpcd[2492]: wlan0: IAID conflicts with one assigned to uap0

Default dhcp + dnsmasq values that were previously hardcoded for these interfaces now live in config/defaults.json. This file is moved by the installer to /etc/raspap/networking. If the installer was not run with the --branch option these defaults are probably missing. There are some updates to raspap.sudoers that will need to be applied as well.

[mp035]

The installer was run with the -b option pointing to my rebased branch to make sure the changes to lighttpd config files were made correctly (which they appear to be). So I double checked defaults.json was correctly installed, and it seems to be right,
Here's the console transcript with sdcard mounted on my manjaro laptop.

[mp035]

Found it. /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf had interface=wlan0 and it should have been interface=uap0. I changed it and it is now working.

I will re-run the install procedure, taking notice of the interface value as I set it up, because I wonder if it is another 'band-aid' lurking in the code that selects the wrong interface.

Thanks heaps for the assistance you have given me.

[billz]

No worries, glad to have this collaboration.

Re: hostapd.conf, I've identified the bug and pushed a fix. Thanks for catching it.

[mp035]

BTW your fix has a typo in your master branch. includes/hostapd.php line 359:
function updateHostapdConfig($ignore_broadcast_ssid,$wifiAPEnble,$bridgedEnable)
should be
function updateHostapdConfig($ignore_broadcast_ssid, $wifiAPEnable, $bridgedEnable)
(you forgot the a in $wifiApEnable)

I'll push a commit to my latest pull request to fix it in dhcp-etho branch.

[billz]

Thanks for spotting this. I've pushed a fix to the master branch.

[mp035]

I Just noticed the same problem on line 251 of the same file.