Note: this backend has been replaced in flathub.org by this one (Sept. 2020)

Linux Store backend

This is a simple Spring Boot App implementing a backend for linux-store-frontend:

• Implements a system to get the list of apps and runtimes published in flatpak repos like Flathub and others
• Stores the information in a relational database
• Offers a simple REST API to get this information

Requirements

For the backend:

• Java 7+ (java-8-oracle recommended)
• maven
• appstream-appdata-java compiled and present in your local maven repository

For the script appstream-extractor (info below):

• flatpak
• ostree
• tar
• unzip

How appstream information is obtained

The list of apps and runtimes published in a flatpak repo is obtained extracting the contents of the appstream branch.

This is done using the provided script appstream-extractor. It can be run like this:

# Add flathub repo
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

# Run the extractor script as root manually. 
# Once it works it can be run periodically in a cron job
 ./appstream-extractor 

The script will:

• Extract the appstream data to /var/lib/appstream-extractor/export-data
• Update the file /var/lib/appstream-extractor/appstream-extractor.info with information about the last exported data (ostree commit, ...)

linux-store-backend will parse this information periodically and store it in the database.

Testing linux-store-backend

You can run the backend using an in-memory database from the command line:

mvn install
mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=TEST 

Once the service is running go to http://localhost:8080/v1/apps/update to import the appstream data exported with the script appdata-extractor.

Finally, fetch the data at http://localhost:8080/v1/apps

Improving linux-store-backend

This is just a proof of concept implemented with Spring Boot. Look at ApiController.java and follow the code to undertand how it works.

TODO:

• Improve appstream-extractor to manage multiple repos
• Import and store appdata translations
• Import and store appdata for all arches (arm, ...)
• Search apps by name, keywords, categories, ...
• Search themes
• Search runtimes
• Pagination
• Activity: events, ...
• Integration with GitHub to obtain extra info (publisher name and photo, ...)
• Improve performance (ehcache, ...)
• Rate Limiting