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Companion

Drag and drop, webcam, basic file manipulation (adding metadata, for example) and uploading via tus-resumable uploads or XHR/Multipart are all possible using just the Uppy client module.

However, if you add Companion to the mix, your users will be able to select files from remote sources, such as Instagram, Google Drive and Dropbox, bypassing the client (so a 5 GB video isn’t eating into your users’ data plans), and then uploaded to the final destination. Files are removed from Companion after an upload is complete, or after a reasonable timeout. Access tokens also don’t stick around for long, for security reasons.

Companion handles the server-to-server communication between your server and file storage providers such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram, etc. Note that you can not upload files to Companion, it just handles the third party integrations.

Supported providers

As of now, Companion is integrated to work with:

  • Google Drive
  • Dropbox
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Remote URLs
  • Amazon S3

Installation

Install from NPM:

npm install @uppy/companion

If you don’t have a Node.js project with a package.json you might want to install/run Companion globally like so: [sudo] npm install -g @uppy/[email protected].

Unfortunately, Windows is not a supported platform right now. It may work, and we’re happy to accept improvements in this area, but we can’t provide assistance.

Usage

Companion may either be used as a pluggable express app, which you plug into your already existing server, or it may simply be run as a standalone server:

Plugging into an already existing server

To plug Companion into an existing server, call its .app method, passing in an options object as a parameter.

var express = require('express')
var bodyParser = require('body-parser')
var session = require('express-session')
var companion = require('@uppy/companion')

var app = express()
app.use(bodyParser.json())
app.use(session({secret: 'some secrety secret'}))
...
// be sure to place this anywhere after app.use(bodyParser.json()) and app.use(session({...})
const options = {
  providerOptions: {
    google: {
      key: 'GOOGLE_KEY',
      secret: 'GOOGLE_SECRET'
    }
  },
  server: {
    host: 'localhost:3020',
    protocol: 'http',
  },
  filePath: '/path/to/folder/'
}

app.use(companion.app(options))

please be sure to allow the following HTTP methods in your server like so:

res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "OPTIONS, GET, POST, PATCH, PUT");

See Options for valid configuration options.

To use WebSockets for realtime upload progress, you can call the socket method, like so:

...
var server = app.listen(PORT)

companion.socket(server, options)

This takes your server instance and your Uppy Options as parameters.

Running as a standalone server

Please ensure that the required environment variables are set before running/using Companion as a standalone server. See Configure Standalone for the variables required.

Set environment variables first:

export COMPANION_SECRET="shh!Issa Secret!"
export COMPANION_DOMAIN="YOUR SERVER DOMAIN"
export COMPANION_DATADIR="PATH/TO/DOWNLOAD/DIRECTORY"

And then run:

companion

You can also pass in the path to your JSON config file, like so:

companion --config /path/to/uppyconf.json

Please see Options for possible options.

Configuring a standalone server

To run Companion as a standalone server, you are required to set your Uppy Options via environment variables:

####### Mandatory variables ###########

# any long set of random characters for the server session
export COMPANION_SECRET="shh!Issa Secret!"
# specifying a secret file will override a directly set secret
export COMPANION_SECRET_FILE="PATH/TO/COMPANION/SECRET/FILE"
# corresponds to the server.host option
export COMPANION_DOMAIN="YOUR SERVER DOMAIN"
# corresponds to the filePath option
export COMPANION_DATADIR="PATH/TO/DOWNLOAD/DIRECTORY"

###### Optional variables ##########

# corresponds to the server.protocol option, defaults to http
export COMPANION_PROTOCOL="YOUR SERVER PROTOCOL"
# the port on which to start the server, defaults to 3020
export COMPANION_PORT="YOUR SERVER PORT"
# corresponds to the server.port option, defaults to ''
export COMPANION_PATH="/SERVER/PATH/TO/WHERE/COMPANION/LIVES"

# use this in place of COMPANION_PATH if the server path should not be
# handled by the express.js app, but maybe by an external server configuration
# instead (e.g Nginx).
export COMPANION_IMPLICIT_PATH="/SERVER/PATH/TO/WHERE/UPPY/SERVER/LIVES"

# comma-separated client hosts to whitlelist by the server
# if not specified, the server would allow any host
export COMPANION_CLIENT_ORIGINS="localhost:3452,uppy.io"

# corresponds to the redisUrl option
# this also enables Redis session storage if set
export COMPANION_REDIS_URL="REDIS URL"

# to enable Dropbox
export COMPANION_DROPBOX_KEY="YOUR DROPBOX KEY"
export COMPANION_DROPBOX_SECRET="YOUR DROPBOX SECRET"
# specifying a secret file will override a directly set secret
export COMPANION_DROPBOX_SECRET_FILE="PATH/TO/DROPBOX/SECRET/FILE"

# to enable Google Drive
export COMPANION_GOOGLE_KEY="YOUR GOOGLE KEY"
export COMPANION_GOOGLE_SECRET="YOUR GOOGLE SECRET"
# specifying a secret file will override a directly set secret
export COMPANION_GOOGLE_SECRET_FILE="PATH/TO/GOOGLE/SECRET/FILE"

# to enable Instagram
export COMPANION_INSTAGRAM_KEY="YOUR INSTAGRAM KEY"
export COMPANION_INSTAGRAM_SECRET="YOUR INSTAGRAM SECRET"
# specifying a secret file will override a directly set secret
export COMPANION_INSTAGRAM_SECRET_FILE="PATH/TO/INSTAGRAM/SECRET/FILE"

# to enable Facebook
export COMPANION_FACEBOOK_KEY="YOUR FACEBOOK KEY"
export COMPANION_FACEBOOK_SECRET="YOUR FACEBOOK SECRET"
# specifying a secret file will override a directly set secret
export COMPANION_FACEBOOK_SECRET_FILE="PATH/TO/FACEBOOK/SECRET/FILE"

# to enable S3
export COMPANION_AWS_KEY="YOUR AWS KEY"
export COMPANION_AWS_SECRET="YOUR AWS SECRET"
# specifying a secret file will override a directly set secret
export COMPANION_AWS_SECRET_FILE="PATH/TO/AWS/SECRET/FILE"
export COMPANION_AWS_BUCKET="YOUR AWS S3 BUCKET"
export COMPANION_AWS_REGION="AWS REGION"

# corresponds to the server.oauthDomain option
export COMPANION_OAUTH_DOMAIN="sub.domain.com"
# corresponds to the server.validHosts option
export COMPANION_DOMAINS="sub1.domain.com,sub2.domain.com,sub3.domain.com"

# corresponds to the sendSelfEndpoint option
export COMPANION_SELF_ENDPOINT="THIS SHOULD BE SAME AS YOUR DOMAIN + PATH"

# comma-separated URLs
# corresponds to the uploadUrls option
export COMPANION_UPLOAD_URLS="http://master.tus.io/files/,https://master.tus.io/files/"

See env.example.sh for an example configuration script.

Options

{
  providerOptions: {
    google: {
      key: "***",
      secret: "***"
    },
    dropbox: {
      key: "***",
      secret: "***"
    },
    instagram: {
      key: "***",
      secret: "***"
    },
    facebook: {
      key: "***",
      secret: "***"
    },
    s3: {
      getKey: (req, filename) => filename,
      key: "***",
      secret: "***",
      bucket: "bucket-name",
      region: "us-east-1"
    }
  },
  server: {
    host: "localhost:3020", // or yourdomain.com
    protocol: "http"
  },
  filePath: "path/to/download/folder",
  sendSelfEndpoint: "localhost:3020",
  secret: 'mysecret',
  uploadUrls: ['https://myuploadurl.com', 'http://myuploadurl2.com']
  debug: true
}

  1. filePath(required) - Full path to the directory to which provider files would be downloaded temporarily.

  2. redisUrl(optional) - URL to running Redis server. If this is set, the state of uploads would be stored temporarily. This helps for resumed uploads after a browser crash from the client. The stored upload would be sent back to the client on reconnection.

  3. providerOptions(optional) - An object containing credentials (key and secret) for each provider you would like to enable. Please see the list of supported providers.

  4. server(optional) - An object with details, mainly used to carry out oauth authentication from any of the enabled providers above. Though it is optional, it is required if you would be enabling any of the supported providers. The following are the server options you may set:

    • protocol - http | https
    • host(required) - your server host (e.g localhost:3020, mydomain.com)
    • path - the server path to where the Uppy app is sitting (e.g if Companion is at mydomain.com/uppy, then the path would be /uppy).
    • oauthDomain - if you have multiple instances of Companion with different (and perhaps dynamic) subdomains, you can set a master domain (e.g sub1.mydomain.com) to handle your oauth authentication for you. This would then redirect to the slave subdomain with the required credentials on completion.
    • validHosts - if you are setting a master oauthDomain, you need to set a list of valid hosts, so the master oauth handler can validate the host of the Uppy instance requesting the authentication. This is basically a list of valid domains running your Companion instances. The list may also contain regex patterns. e.g ['sub2.mydomain.com', 'sub3.mydomain.com', '(\\w+).mydomain.com']

  5. sendSelfEndpoint(optional) - This is basically the same as the server.host + server.path attributes. The major reason for this attribute is that, when set, it adds the value as the i-am header of every request response.

  6. customProviders(optional) - This option enables you to add custom providers along with the already supported providers. See Adding Custom Providers for more information.

  7. uploadUrls(optional) - An array of URLs (full paths). If specified, Companion will only accept uploads to these URLs (useful when you want to make sure a Companion instance is only allowed to upload to your servers, for example).

  8. secret(required) - A secret string which Companion uses to generate authorization tokens.

  9. debug(optional) - A boolean flag to tell Companion whether or not to log useful debug information while running.

S3 options

The S3 uploader has some options in addition to the ones necessary for authentication.

s3.getKey(req, filename)

Get the key name for a file. The key is the file path to which the file will be uploaded in your bucket. This option should be a function receiving two arguments: req, the HTTP request, and the original filename of the uploaded file. It should return a string key. The req parameter can be used to upload to a user-specific folder in your bucket, for example:

app.use(authenticationMiddleware)
app.use(uppy.app({
  s3: {
    getKey: (req, filename) => `${req.user.id}/${filename}`,
    /* auth options */
  }
}))

The default value simply returns filename, so all files will be uploaded to the root of the bucket as their original file name.

Running in Kubernetes

We have a detailed guide on running Companion in Kubernetes for you, that’s how we currently run our example server at https://companion.uppy.io.

Adding custom providers

As of now, Companion supports Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram, and URL (remote urls) out of the box, but you may also choose to add your own custom providers. You can do this by passing the customProviders option when calling the Uppy app method. The custom provider is expected to support Oauth 1 or 2 for authentication/authorization.

let options = {
    customProviders: {
        myprovidername: {
            config: {
                authorize_url: "https://mywebsite.com/authorize",
                access_url: "https://mywebsite.com/token",
                oauth: 2,
                key: "***",
                secret: "***",
                scope: ["read", "write"]
            },
            module: require('/path/to/provider/module')
        }
    }
}

uppy.app(options)

The customProviders option should be an object containing each custom provider. Each custom provider would, in turn, be an object with two keys, config and module. The config option would contain Oauth API settings, while the module would point to the provider module.

To work well with Companion, the Module must be a class with the following methods.

  1. list (options, done) - lists JSON data of user files (e.g. list of all the files in a particular directory).
    • options - is an object containing the following attributes
      • token - authorization token (retrieved from oauth process) to send along with your request
      • directory - the id/name of the directory from which data is to be retrieved. This may be ignored if it doesn’t apply to your provider
      • query - expressjs query params object received by the server (just in case there is some data you need in there).
    • done (err, response, body) - the callback that should be called when the request to your provider is made. As the signature indicates, the following data should be passed along to the callback err, response, and body.
  2. download (options, onData, onResponse) - downloads a particular file from the provider.
    • options - is an object containing the following attributes:
      • token - authorization token (retrieved from oauth process) to send along with your request.
      • id - ID of the file being downloaded.
    • onData (chunk) - a callback that should be called with each data chunk received on download. This is useful if the size of the downloaded file can be pre-determined. This would allow for pipelined upload of the file (to the desired destination), while the download is still going on.
    • onResponse (response) - if the size of the downloaded file can not be pre-determined by Companion, then this callback should be called in place of the onData callback. This callback would be called after the download is done, and would take the downloaded data (response) as the argument.

Development

1. To set up Companion for local development, please clone the Uppy repo and install, like so:

git clone https://github.com/transloadit/uppy && cd uppy && npm install

2. Configure your environment variables by copying the env.example.sh file to env.sh and edit it to its correct values.

cp env.example.sh env.sh
$EDITOR env.sh

3. To start the server, run:

npm run start:companion

This would get the Companion instance running on http://localhost:3020. It uses nodemon so it will automatically restart when files are changed.

Live example

An example server is running at https://companion.uppy.io, which is deployed with Kubernetes

How the Authentication and Token mechanism works

This section describes how Authentication works between Companion and Providers. While this behaviour is the same for all Providers (Dropbox, Instagram, Google Drive), we are going to be referring to Dropbox in place of any Provider throughout this section.

The following steps describe the actions that take place when a user Authenticates and Uploads from Dropbox through Companion:

  • The visitor to a website with Uppy clicks “Connect to Dropbox”.
  • Uppy sends a request to Companion, which in turn sends an OAuth request to Dropbox (Requires that OAuth credentials from Dropbox have been added to Companion).
  • Dropbox asks the visitor to log in, and whether the Website should be allowed to access your files
  • If the visitor agrees, Companion will receive a token from Dropbox, with which we can temporarily download files.
  • Companion encrypts the token with a secret key and sends the encrypted token to Uppy (client)
  • Every time the visitor clicks on a folder in Uppy, it asks Companion for the new list of files, with this question, the token (still encrypted by Companion) is sent along.
  • Companion decrypts the token, requests the list of files from Dropbox and sends it to Uppy.
  • When a file is selected for upload, Companion receives the token again according to this procedure, decrypts it again, and thereby downloads the file from Dropbox.
  • As the bytes arrive, Companion uploads the bytes to the final destination (depending on the configuration: Apache, a Tus server, S3 bucket, etc).
  • Companion reports progress to Uppy, as if it were a local upload.
  • Completed!
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