819170 - Document the entry points app manifest property on MDN

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Marketplace Graveyard :: Developer Pages, defect, P2)

Description

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

App developers are able to use a property called entry points on firefox os. However, we currently do not have any docs on this. Let's get the docs up to date.

Comment 1

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Entry points allows for multiple launch points for a single app. A big example can be seen in the comms app:

https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/apps/communications/manifest.webapp

entry points essentially allows you to add multiple icons to the screen. Clicking the particular icon will launch the app at the particular entry point launch_path. This allows for cases where you can have a facebook messaging portion of the app launch to facebook.com/messaging with one icon and another facebook news feed of the app launch to facebook.com/news with a different icon.

Comment 2

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Properties within entry points that should work:

name
launch_path
icons
locales
activities
messages

Comment 3

[Mark Giffin [:markg]]

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #2)
> Properties within entry points that should work:
> 
> name
> launch_path
> icons
> locales
> activities
> messages

The only one of these that is not already documented is "messages". What does this one do?

Comment 4

[Mark Giffin [:markg]]

Never mind, I am pursuing info on the messages property here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=819175
"Document app manifest property messages on MDN"

Comment 5

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Mark Giffin from comment #3)
> (In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #2)
> > Properties within entry points that should work:
> > 
> > name
> > launch_path
> > icons
> > locales
> > activities
> > messages
> 
> The only one of these that is not already documented is "messages". What
> does this one do?

Right. An app entry point can make use of these properties (think of it as a composite set of launch points for an app that can have the typical run of the mill app manifest properties itself).

Comment 6

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Can you give us a status update of this bug?

Comment 7

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

I actually think we can close this as a WONTFIX. We aren't providing third-party support for v1 for entry points and don't know when we will support it. We aren't documenting internal app manifest properties on MDN, so I don't think it's necessary to document this now.

Comment 8

[Mark Giffin [:markg]]

Sounds good. I just completed this page, which gives as much info as I could collect on all currently exposed permissions, it should be the single source of truth now:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Apps/App_permissions

Comment 9

[Loïc Faure-Lacroix]

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #7)
> I actually think we can close this as a WONTFIX. We aren't providing
> third-party support for v1 for entry points and don't know when we will
> support it. We aren't documenting internal app manifest properties on MDN,
> so I don't think it's necessary to document this now.

Would be great to have internals documented even on MDN... Even if some features are for internal only, it would make things easier for people that would want to provide some alternative to the Gaia platform. For example, there are lots of manifest properties that are missing from the MDN documentation.