FDC3 for Web Browsers Discussion group 21st March 2024

[kriswest]

Group overview

Group convened to discuss how to enable FDC3 use in a web browser, without the use of a browser extension (such as fdc3-desktop-agent or a container).

Issue: #896
Mailing list discussion: https://groups.google.com/a/finos.org/g/fdc3/c/jCvlLjokBLs

In a recent email on the FDC3 mailing list, @kriswest wrote:

... I also want to add that there is clearly significant interest in the community in enabling FDC3 use on the web. There is a strong use case in that it would enable better onboarding journeys with less drop-off (where you use an app on the web with others before adopting a desktop container or similar).

and:

But there are also additional challenges such as how to make the API available reliably without importing a proprietary module from a particular vendor into every app, how to deal with more than one implementation of API/Desktop Agent in the browser at once, how to do this reliably and securely within the browser sandbox etc.. Work needs to be done in the Standard to solve these issues and to make web browser use possible in a future FDC3 Standard version - which I believe is possible (and likely to involve using a vendor-agnostic FDC3 NPM module to detect and connect to API implementation(s)). However, we're going to need to do that work to enable the aforementioned API implementations to be compliant and if we fail to hold the line now on compliance with the current version of the FDC3 Standard, that may never happen.

Shared doc with current draft: https://tick42-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/finsemble_datastore_interop_io/EZ0dfTCdRlJCnIF3C_1Oit0B7xK0OOJ0nAvC73dwad53AA?e=x2zlge

Relevant issue tags

Current open issues that relate to the above concepts with the label:

Meeting Date

Thursday 21 March 2024 - 11am (US eastern timezone EDT) / 3pm (London, GMT)

Note the meeting start time in the US has shifted due to daylight savings time

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Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
• Review action items from previous meeting (5mins)
  • FDC3 for Web Browsers Discussion group 15th February 2024 #1155
• POC of channel selector and intent resolver UIs
• Tasks to raise the proposal as a PR
  • Review of @thorsent's draft PR: Agent agnostic fdc3 spec #1167
• AOB & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

• The meeting focused on review of the progress on the POC and on the draft documentation PR.
  • @kriswest gave an introduction to the Agent agnostic fdc3 spec #1167, which attempts to translate the proposal in the group's shared doc into a documentation PR and represents a large contribution of effort from @thorsent, which is much appreciated.
    • The draft includes messages needed in the wire protocol (currently called the Browser Communication Protocol) in Typescript format. It also introduces a specifications folder to separate out the (growing) info needed to implement a DA from the info needed to work with one - this seems a good idea as we always aim to keep complexity lower for app developers to aid uptake! The new files need adding to the docusaurus navigation.
    • @kriswest to migrate the PR branch to the FINOS repo to facilitate work on it by the maintainers to deal with comments submitted.
  • The main outstanding issues to POC are:
    • intent resolver and channel selector UI solutions - which are complicated by the need to use OS/vendor agnostic code only in the applications to preserve WORA.
      • @thorsent's documentation draft recommended that default implementations are provided by the FDC3 library initially - with the author suggesting that a later iteration could further refine this area, once the main thrust of the proposal is accepted. However, the meeting did not wholly agree, with a number of participants believing that we should find solutions that allow a DA to override the default implementations.
    • alignment with the proposal (changes may be needed in both directions)
    • Bridging does not provide all the required messages (but does have many of them, although some will be slightly off due to differing requirements in bridging).
      • @kriswest to make a start on dedicated messages - but ensure type names and payloads are shared with bridging wherever possible to keep maintenance costs low
        • @robmoffat indicated a desire to keep messages as similar as possible to bridging to make passing them between the different interfaces (to the web and to the bridge) in an implementation as simple as possible.
        • @robmoffat also indicated a desire to be able to use the wire protocol being worked out in other language implementation - supporting the need to have messages in JSON Schema format (rather than typescript) so that code for them can be generated for other languages via quicktype.

Action Items

• @kriswest to migrate the PR branch to the FINOS repo to facilitate work on it by the maintainers to deal with comments submitted.
• @kriswest to make a start on dedicated messages - but ensure type names and payloads are shared with bridging wherever possible to keep maintenance costs low
• @robmoffat to continue exploring the POC - particularly regarding Intent resolvers and channel selector UIs

Untracked attendees

Full name	Affiliation	GitHub username

[robmoffat]

Rob / FINOS 🐄

[mistryvinay]

Vinay Mistry / Symphony 🎵

[openfin-johans]

Johan / OpenFin 🎁

[Lecss]

Alex Dumitru / Citi

[novavi]

Derek Novavi / S&P Global

[kriswest]

Kris West / interop.io