Enhancing Theia Cloud: Redirecting to Specific Workspace Subfolders

[wss29]

hi @JanKoehnlein

Problem Description

When launching an app in Theia Cloud with the following configuration:

• landingPage.ephemeralStorage set to false
• Using storage class via operator.storageClassName (see configuration image below)

I'm experiencing issues with workspace folder redirection.

Current Setup

• Using local persistent-volume for storage
• Project structure:

my-project/
├── prj1/
└── prj2/

Expected vs Actual Behavior

my custom landing page has labels for each subfolder

Expected	Actual
Clicking prj1 label should launch Theia Cloud and redirect to prj1/ subfolder	Always redirects to root my-project folder

Investigation Findings

After examining the common client code, I found the redirection logic doesn't handle subfolder paths.

  export async function launchAndRedirect(request: LaunchRequest, options: RequestOptions = {}): Promise<string> {
    const url = await launch(request, options);
    console.log(`Redirect to: https://${url}`);
    location.replace(`https://${url}`);
    return url;
  }

Proposed Solution

I suggest modifying the method to accept an additional suffix parameter:

  export async function launchAndRedirect(request: LaunchRequest, options: RequestOptions = {},suffix:string): Promise<string> {
    const url = await launch(request, options);
    console.log(`Redirect to: https://${url}/${suffix}`);
    location.replace(`https://${url}/${suffix}`);
    return url;
  }

Open Questions

1. Is this the appropriate solution?
2. Are there alternative ways to redirect to workspace subfolders?

Configuration References

1. Storage class setting:
   
2. Persistent volume setup:
   

[wss29]

hi @JanKoehnlein
The solution I proposed above cannot solve the problem.

When I execute launchAndRedirect, the returned URL looks like this:
https://192.168.0.200.sslip.io/instances/52d79817-f457-48d2-b39c-241ce1531aaf

However, after clicking the launch button, my application's current URL becomes:
https://192.168.0.200.sslip.io/instances/52d79817-f457-48d2-b39c-241ce1531aaf/#/home/project

It appears that Theia Cloud combines the URL returned by the launch method with the mount path defined in the application configuration.

The URL I actually expect to see when clicking the "prj1" label on my custom landing page should be:
https://192.168.0.200.sslip.io/instances/52d79817-f457-48d2-b39c-241ce1531aaf/#/home/project/prj1

I've tried to understand how Theia Cloud combines the launch URL with the application definition's mount path. I searched for "mountpath" in the source code but couldn't find the information I needed.

[jfaltermeier]

Hi,

The Theia Cloud demo application passes /home/project as a startup argument:
https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia-ide/blob/073927e8ca91a19f65bfd0b71a47f73b04b685a1/browser.Dockerfile#L71

The mount path in the app definition is aligned with this and mounts at /home/project.

When redirecting to the main Theia URL (which is what launchAndRedirect does), e.g. ws.theia-cloud.io/uuid/, Theia will redirect internally to ws.theia-cloud.io/uuid/#/home/project because of the startup args from the Dockerfile.

If you instead open ws.theia-cloud.io/uuid/#/home in the browser directly, that value in the URL (/home) will override the startup argument, and this project will be opened.

So in your launcher page, you can just use something like:

const url = await TheiaCloud.launch(request, options);
location.replace(`https://${url}#${pathToYourProject}`);

[wss29]

hi @jfaltermeier
Thank you very much, it works.