Nextcloud Forum

A full-featured forum application for Nextcloud, allowing users to create discussion categories, threads, and posts within their Nextcloud instance.

⚠️ Early Development Notice

This app is in early stages of development. While functional, you may encounter bugs or incomplete features. Please report any issues on GitHub and consider backing up your data regularly.

Features

• Category Management: Organize discussions into categories with headers and custom permissions
• Threaded Discussions: Create and participate in threaded conversations
• BBCode Support: Rich text formatting with built-in and custom BBCode tags
• File Attachments: Attach files from Nextcloud to posts with secure permission-based access
• Reactions: React to posts with emoji reactions
• User Roles & Permissions: Fine-grained permission system for moderators and administrators
• Read Markers: Track unread posts and threads
• Search: Full-text search across threads and posts
• Modern UI: Built with Vue 3 and Nextcloud Vue components

Installation

From the Nextcloud App Store

Install Forum directly from your Nextcloud instance through the Apps page.

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release from the releases page
2. Extract to your Nextcloud apps directory:

cd /path/to/nextcloud/custom_apps
tar xfv forum-vX.X.X.tar.gz

3. Enable the app from Nextcloud's Apps page or via command line:

php occ app:enable forum

Contributing

I am developing this app on my free time, so any support, whether code, issues, or just stars is very helpful to sustaining its life. If you are feeling incredibly generous and would like to donate just a small amount to help sustain this project, I would be very very thankful!

I welcome any issues or pull requests on GitHub. If you find a bug, or would like a new feature, don't hesitate to open an appropriate issue and I will do my best to reply promptly.

Development

Automation

Most development processes are automated:

• GitHub Actions run tests, builds, and validations on each push or pull request.
• Pre-commit formatting is handled by lint-staged, which automatically formats code before committing.

🛠️ The NPM package husky takes care of installing the pre-commit hook automatically after pnpm install.

---

Manual Commands

While automation handles most workflows, the following commands are available for local development and debugging:

Build the App

make

Installs dependencies and compiles frontend/backend assets.

Run Tests

make test

Runs unit and integration tests (if available).

Format & Lint

make format   # Auto-fix code style
make lint     # Check code quality

Generate OpenAPI Docs

make openapi

Output is saved to build/openapi/openapi.json.

Packaging for Release

make appstore    # Production build for Nextcloud app store
make source      # Full source package
make distclean   # Clean build artifacts and dependencies

Sign Releases

After uploading the archive to GitHub:

make sign

Downloads the .tar.gz release, verifies it, and prints a SHA-512 signature using your key at ~/.nextcloud/certificates/forum.key.

---

Scaffolding

Generate boilerplate for common app pieces with:

pnpm gen <type> [name]

name is required for every type except migration.

Available generators

Type	Purpose	Output directory	Name required?	Template folder	Notes
component	Vue single-file component for reusable UI	src/components	✅	gen/component	For user-facing building blocks.
view	Vue view / route view	src/views	✅	gen/view	Pair with your router.
api	PHP controller (API endpoint)	lib/Controller	✅	gen/api	PSR-4 namespace: OCA\<App>\Controller.
service	PHP service class	lib/Service	✅	gen/service	Business logic; DI-friendly.
util	PHP utility/helper	lib/Util	✅	gen/util	Pure helpers / small utilities.
model	PHP DB model / entity	lib/Db	✅	gen/model	Pair with migrations.
command	Nextcloud OCC console command	lib/Command	✅	gen/command	Shows up in occ.
task-queued	Queued background job	lib/Cron	✅	gen/task-queued	Extend queued job base.
task-timed	Timed background job (cron)	lib/Cron	✅	gen/task-timed	Scheduled execution.
migration	Database migration	lib/Migration	❌	gen/migration	Auto-numbers version; injects version and dt.

How migrations are numbered

The scaffolder looks at lib/Migration, finds the latest VersionNNNN... file, and increments it for you. It also injects:

• version — the next numeric version
• dt — a timestamp like YYYYMMDDHHmmss (via date-fns)

You don’t pass a name for migrations.

Examples

Create a Vue component:

pnpm gen component UserListItem
# → src/components/UserListItem.vue

Create a Vue page:

pnpm gen view Settings
# → src/views/Settings.vue

Create an API controller:

pnpm gen api Users
# → lib/Controller/UsersController.php

Create a service:

pnpm gen service MyService
# → lib/Service/MyService.php

Create a queued job:

pnpm gen task-queued UpdateUsers
# → lib/Cron/UpdateUsers.php

Create a migration (no name):

pnpm gen migration
# → lib/Migration/Version{NEXT}.php   (with injected {version} and {dt})

Resources

Nextcloud Development

• Nextcloud App Development Guide
• Nextcloud Developer Manual
• Nextcloud Vue Components
• Publishing to the App Store

Technologies Used

• Frontend: Vue 3, Vite, TypeScript
• Backend: PHP 8.1+, Nextcloud OCP API
• Database: SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL (via Nextcloud)
• BBCode Parsing: ChrisKonnertz/BBCode

License

This app is licensed under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license.