Integrating External Data Verification with ownCloud Forms

Development
1

Hello ownCloud community,

I’m exploring ways to use ownCloud as a backend for custom data collection forms in our organization. Specifically, I want to allow users to submit sensitive data that requires real-time verification, such as account balances or financial information, before the submission is accepted.

For instance, we’re looking at implementing something similar to FAB Bank balance inquiry, where a user’s input could be cross-checked against an external source to confirm its accuracy.

My questions for the community:

  • Has anyone integrated external APIs with ownCloud forms or file submissions for live verification?
  • What’s the recommended approach to securely fetch and store sensitive data without affecting synchronization or privacy?
  • Are there any plugins, scripts, or workflows that could simplify connecting ownCloud to external services for validation purposes?

Any insights, examples, or guidance would be greatly appreciated. I want the implementation to remain seamless and secure for end users.

2

I’d discard OC10. I don’t think it was designed for that, and you won’t get real-time capabilities. At best, you might verify things as part of the upload process, but it will hang the upload and it could cause problems because the clients (including the browser) won’t get any response until the whole process is completed.

oCIS might be better prepared, although I’m not sure about the extent. In theory, the antivirus service (already there) behave the way you want but instead of checking for viruses, you’d need to check for other data. The problem here is that I’m not sure how well prepared is oCIS to accept an additional service as part of the file postprocessing. It might not be just implementing your code, but also changing and adjusting existing code.

That’s for a deep integration with the platform.

If you want just a storage system. you can use both platforms to upload the files there. However, someone will need to manually check the files and / or move them around.

In general, I don’t think ownCloud has anything specific for your use case. The simplest option I think is to adapt your workflow and use ownCloud as just a storage system.

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